When we were young, Mike and I lived on a dead end street. If you walked to the end of Sun Valley Drive and climbed the fence, you’d face the barrier between our endless suburban upbringing and a rather randomly-placed cow pasture. We’d sit atop the fence and watch the cows, somewhat alien to our personal experiences of two-hand touch football and Bard’s Tale II on the Commodore 64

It was a more innocent time, punctuated occasionally by bouts of violent beatings from our respective parents, who had an agreement that they were allowed to beat each others’ kids if they acted up or for no reason at all.

The local hobby shop carried all kinds of role-playing games and tabletop strategy sets, which we eagerly ate up with our allowances and wages from working for the local travelling Renaissance Faire whenever they put out an ad for sexy children to participate in their staged strip chess matches. We’d crowd around the coffee table and pore over every detail, every rule, and every half-naked piece of artistry. I knew the 2nd Edition treasure table by heart.

Now we’re older and it’s an odd thought, tracing the path from those idyllic years of green lawns and BMX races to the present day. Mike is either constantly drunk or incarcerated, and I’m sitting on the biggest stockpile of weapons since the Iran-Contra scandal. Either way, we both eat raw danger and shit it out in conveniently perfect bricks every time so that scientists can more safely analyze it.

But back then, something happened that still echoes today. In that cow pasture at the end of our little dead end road, a harbinger of our future scraping together pennies to pay the rent ages late would make itself known.

We were sitting on that fence, watching the man we called The Farmer tending to his field. It was a large field, about the size of a football field, nestled between three little suburbs and the nearby mansions, and the cows were largely allowed to wander around free. And today, that wasn’t a good thing.

Mike slugged my arm and pointed. A nearby bull started snorting and stamping. He was definitely looking at our Farmer in a way that meant something. After a few moments, the farmer noticed too. One of the worst mistakes you can make with an aggressive animal is show fear. Many times we’ve been confronted with a rampaging Jace Hall and faced a near devouring, only to have Mike punch him straight in the larynx and send him packing until the next week. I’d thank Mike, who would invariably mutter something about thinking he had just attacked Jeff Gerstmann, and further that he hadn’t been aware of any danger to us.

Well, the farmer panicked and ran. Stupid move. The bull went from stamp to full charge faster than our eyes could register any in-between movement, and in the briefest foot race possible he had pinned the farmer to the ground beneath his massive torso, rubbing his gargantuan bull dick up and down on the man’s back as he laid there, terrified.

As we walked home, the girly shrieks of pain and fear at our backs, Mike uttered the words that would ultimately lead to this collection of our ramblings; “You know, that farmer is us, in a way. The bull is Gary Gygax, making us buy the Dungeon Master’s Guide in addition to the Player’s Handbook and then sneaking up on us with the Fiend Folio.”

“Maybe we should’ve helped that guy.”

“In a cold, uncaring world, what difference would it have made? We could have helped him, but what would it have accomplished?”

My friends, I regret to tell you; SNK Playmore is the bull, and when you buy extra characters for your gimped copy of King of Fighters XII, you are the farmer. Shrieking, terrified, and covered in an expansive, wavy stream of bovine jism.

Mike Capps

Out of frame: You, dear reader