A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JIMMY
15 year old Jimmy Davidson got off the bus into the cold, gray February afternoon. A cold wind blew down the back of his jacket causing him to shiver.
As he walked away from the bus, he felt a sharp impact on the back of his head. He looked down and saw an eraser lying on the ground. He glared back at the bus and saw Dusty Allen cracking up laughing from inside as the bus driver scolded him and then pulled the bus away from the curb.
Feeling even more down than usual, Jimmy walked up the drive. He bent over at the front step and lifted up the ragged welcome mat. The key to the front door had slid into a crack in the sidewalk and he scraped his knuckle trying to get it out. Thinking a silent curse at his mom he slid the key into the lock pushed open the door.
As usual, the house was cold and dark. He shut the door behind him and headed straight for his computer not even pausing to take his jacket off.
He sat down in the metal chair and pushed the power switch on his mom's old pentium 133 system. He squinted at the screen as the light from the monitor showed the Windows 95 welcome screen. Lately the 14 inch screen had been darker than usual and the controls on the front weren't doing a thing to make the screen brighter.
He had been bugging his mom to buy a new computer for a long time now but she would always say, "Honey, I barely have enough money to keep food on the table for you." Yet she always seemed to have enough money for a weekly carton of cigarettes and her hard liquor on the weekends.
With 2 fingers, Jimmy quickly typed the AOL password in without even looking at the keys. Kerrigan's evil face stared back at him for a few seconds before the game started. He quickly logged onto Battle.Net and headed for his favorite channel.
There were more people there than usual and he saw quite a few people that he recognized.
"Cyber-Hootie, you are a gay fag," he typed quickly.
"What the hell is your problem?" came the quick retort.
"I had sex with your mom and she was horrible, that's my problem," he typed feeling a bit of pleasure in the pit of his stomach.
He sent out a few more random insults before he began to feel the familiar itch to play a game.
"People like you are so gay, come into a channel and just randomly insult people. Why don't you play a game so I can kick your ass? " said someone named InYoFace.
"/stats InYoFace," Jimmy typed quickly.
Stats for InYoFace:
Record: 341-106-12
Ladder: 12-4-1 (rating: 1207)
Jimmy quickly squelched him.
Then, Andy6 came into the channel. Oh how Jimmy hated Andy6. Andy6 had conned Jimmy into playing a 1v1 with him. He had allowed an observer into the game and the observer had lagged causing Jimmy to lose. Then Andy6 had posted a report of the game on a prominent web site and a lot of people had made fun of him.
But now he had the chance for revenge. 2 days ago, he had found a web site that offered a cheat which allowed the person using it to see the whole map.
"Andy6, you suck, play me choboass." he quickly typed before someone else had a chance to challenge him.
"Man you are so lame, I'm not playing a game with you," came the reply.
Jimmy could feel the red in his face rising.
"PLAY ME YOU DAMN PUSSY!!! YOU KNOW I'LL KICK YOUR ASS PUSSY!!! |
" he typed furiously.
"Okay guys, press 1 if you think I should kick this newbie's ass" Andy6 typed coolly.
3 or 4 1's quicly popped up on the screen along with "Can I obs?" and "You don't have to play him Andy, we know you can kick his ass".
Jimmy became even more infuriated by these comments but then he saw the message from Andy6.
"Andy6/Andy6"
Jimmy joined the game quickly then activated his cheat before the game started.
The map was Lost Temple. Andy6 chose Protoss as his race and then started the game. At the last second Jimmy chose Zerg.
Jimmy landed at 6:00 and he saw Andy6 was at 12:00. He thought about doing a 4 pool but then decided better of it. He wanted the win to seem legitamite so he could report it and humiliate Andy the way Andy had humiliated him.
He put a hatch at his natural and then started morphing in a spawning pool. He clicked over to Andy's base and saw that he had 3 zealots and a shield battery at his choke while he teched. Jimmy saw that he already had a cybernetics core warping in.
Jimmy decided that he would simply contain Andy6 by putting a bunch of zerglings in the middle of the map and then expanding everywhere. He only had 12 drones mining minerals when he started pumping zerglings out of his 2 hatcheries but he was able to pump the lings out continuously so he figured he was doing the build order right.
When Jimmy had 48 lings in the middle of the map he started to build drones again.
Suddenly, he realized that he hadn't checked to see what Andy was doing for awhile. He looked down at his minimap and saw a dot moving across the screen towards his base. He clicked on it. It was a shuttle!!
Jimmy started scrambling his zerglings from the middle of the map back to his main. But he wasn't fast enough and two reavers landed next to his mineral line and started blowing away drones.
"That Hacker," Jimmy thought to himself, then he typed, "YOU FUCKING HACKER!!"
"Whatever freak," came the reply.
Jimmy's lings arrived on the scene, but most of his drones were already dead. As the lings started to attack the reavers, Andy6 popped them back into the shuttle and started to fly away. Then at the last second he veered over Jimnmy's natural where he had 5 drones mining minerals.
Andy landed the reavers near the mineral line and quickly killed Jimmy's remaining drones.
With a scream of rage, Jimmy sent all his lings running down the ramp. But they got bottled up coming down and Andy6's reavers blew about 15 away in one shot while they tried to decide which way to go. Scarabs kept flying into the lings as they ran down the ramp and the last ling was able to get one hit on a reaver before a final scarab vaporized him.
Then Andy's reavers started firing scarabs at Jimmy's defenseless hatchery at his expansion.
"DAMMIT"
"DAMMIT"
"DAMMIT"
"DAMMIT," spammed Jimmy.
"YOU FUCKING CHEAT ASSHOLE!!" Jimmy typed.
Then, Jimmy pressed alt-tab, maximized his AOL screen and clicked on the sign off button.
"GODDAMIT!!!" he screamed aloud and kicked the metal chair that he had been sitting in across the room. It smashed into the wall causing some paint to chip and a piece of plaster to fall to the floor.
At that moment, Jimmy heard the front door close and his mom's furious footsteps coming down the hall.
"What the hell did you just say Jimmy?" she screamed furiously as she came into the room.
Jimmy looked down at his feet and didn't say anything.
"You look at me when I'm talking to you," she yelled. Then she looked over at the wall where the chair had caused a piece of plaster to fall down and shatter on the floor leaving white powder everywhere.
"You jackass, look what you've done now!" she yelled and landed a hard smack across his face. Then she went over to the computer and pulled out the power cord.
"You aren't using my computer if this is the kind of shit you're gonna do with it. My god, look at this mess."
She turned and stormed out of the room slamming the door behind her.
A tear trickled down Jimmy's cheek. His face burned from the hard smack. He lay back on his bed wondering how long it would be until his mom gave him back the power cord. He needed to get back onto Battle.Net. It was his only escape from this depressing world.
The light coming through his window slowly dimmed as the sun went down and night fell. Jimmy could hear his mom banging around in the kitchen. Then all got quiet for awhile.
Jimmy's clock read 8:37 when he heard his mom's footsteps coming down the hall. They faltered and he heard her stumble and mutter an obscenity under her breath.
The door creaked open and his mom peered into the darkness where she saw his dark shape lying on the bed.
"I'm sorry I hit you Jimmy," she said, and her words slurred off. Even across the room, Jimmy could catch the scent of hard liquor.
She stumbled again and grabbed the doorframe far support.
"Here's your power cord," she said and tossed it across the room. It landed on his lap.
His mom stared at him for a moment, then turned around and stumbled back down the hall.
With shaky hands, Jimmy flipped on his light switch, then ran over to the computer. He plugged in the power cord and then turned the system on. He tapped his fingers impatiently, waiting for Windows to load. Then he quickly logged onto AOL and then Battle.Net.
His mom was drunk tonight. That meant he could stay up as late as he wanted and maybe miss school tomorrow if her hangover was bad enough. Maybe this day hadn't turned out so bad after all.
Author's Note:
Sucks to be Jimmy. Let's all be glad we're not him... are we???
Drefsab
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