to you dear reader

When I was young I used to play Dungeons & Dragons. This cannot come as much of a surprise to anyone. In Dungeons & Dragons the most feared monster was not the dragon.

It was the troll.

Why?

Because the troll regenerated. If you didn’t incinerate every single little bit of him/her would eventually come back and attack you when you least expected it. Forget a severed finger and while you are checking chests for jewels and/or traps the troll is tucked away somewhere growing back his/her teeth and claws.

Hope is a lot like that.

Let me explain.

I was recently in a nursing home and I was turned off by all the old people who, if you so much as made eye contact with them, would launch into their life story. I understand why; nobody was coming to visit and they felt forgotten and telling somebody their every thought was the only way to prove to themselves that they even existed anymore.

It didn’t matter who it was. They would stop complete strangers and start babbling on about who they used to be. Autocorrect is suggesting I should have said “whom they used to be” but considering whom I’m talking about clearly autocorrect has no fucking clue whom I’m talking about.

It only recently occurred to me that I’m a lot like that, except I care about who I’m telling my story to and I will occasionally use the word whom in order to appear brighter than I am.

I want to tell you.

Yes you.

Maybe it’s my Dungeons & Dragon terminology coming back to haunt me but I consider 99.9999% of people on the planet NPCs (Non Player Characters). They don’t really exist. They are only there to fill things out. If my math is correct (which it rarely is), that only leaves a few thousand people that I actually care about and, if my geography is correct (which it almost never is), most of them live in China and don’t speak English.

I hate to say this but that pretty much leaves you.

You have to listen to my dumb life.

So what was all the nonsense about the troll?

Well, I have tried to stop caring if you ever hear my dumb stories but just when I think that the troll has been entirely destroyed I find that some green sliver has escaped my notice and returned in full force.

And what was all that talk about hope?

It’s a metaphor you dumb fuck.

Trust me to care about the opinion of someone who can’t even connect the D&D&H dots.

You could argue that by calling you a dumb fuck I am really just trying to slay the troll once again but I think we both know, without even rolling the d20, that some part of you will survive the insult and be back visiting the website some time soon.

What’s that you say?

You don’t own a d20?

For the love of god please go throw yourself off a bridge you colossal non-metaphor-getting fucktard!

Why couldn’t we have both been dragons?