Puck’s Blog

EB was selling Halo 2 at midnight to people who had preordered it (like me). I showed up about ten minutes early and there was a huge lineup. I instantly regretted not bringing my camera — there was probably a hundred people there waiting to get the game.

It took about an hour to finally get in the store to get my copy, so I had plenty of time to chit-chat with people in the line. In front of me were a few young gamers and behind me was an older woman getting a copy for her son. Her voice was raspy from packs-a-day smoking and her humour and language skills were very rednecky. But she was pleasant enough.

Until the first group of young males to get Halo 2 sped off in their car mocking the rest out the window while driving erratically without their lights on. I laughed and said that it’d serve them right if the cocky pricks got into an accident and died from such stupid behaviour. “That’d be evolution in action,” I said.

There was an instant grimace from smokey. “What?”

“Evolution in action. They’re too dumb to live, so they die before they can breed dumb kids. They die, humanity as a whole get smarter.”

“That’s not evolution, that’s a generational challenge.”

“A what?”

“A generational challenge. Kids like that,” she stated matter-of-factly as though I should know what the hell she was talking about. “Evolution doesn’t work anyway.”

Oh really.

So I told her the story of the Samurai crabs, and rather than quiet her, it got her onto racist remarks about her Taiwanese co-workers and their “superstitions”. Her blinders to the fact that her Christianity (which she now proudly proclaimed) is just another superstition with barely as much basis in fact as her co-worker’s belief in Feng Shui was amusing as hell (no irony intended).

She then proudly described talking down to a buddhist co-worker by asking her if Buddha talked to her, and said that her saviour Jesus Christ spoke to her.

And here I knew I had reached a turning point in the discussion. I was about twenty feet from the entrance to the store and would soon be inside, as long as there was no ruckus. But the opening was there. “Jesus speaks to me personally” she had said and I’m just standing there making that stupid embarassed smile that you make when crazy people are telling you stories. Everyone else was doing it and looking away uncomfortably.

My mind raced with possible outcomes of the obvious retort “Oh really, and just what does Jesus say when he talks to you,” needling her until she flat out admits that either she hears voices or else Jesus doesn’t actually speak to her. Unfortunately too many of them ended with her going nuts and causing enough of a disturbance that getting my game would become a task, so I just smiled, nodded and turned my back to her and that was that. I only partially regret this. It really was the wise thing to do, but it was also the least fun.

But hey, I’ve got Halo 2!