________  ________  ________
   2017-07-12                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   I moved out of home when I was 17,  right  /        _/         /         /
after   high  school.   I   never  ended  up  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
graduating because  by  the end  of it I was    /        \/        \/    /   \
skipping most of my classes  to skulk around   /        _/         /_       _/
the local internet cafe  and  get online but  /-        /        _/         /
that's  maybe  a  story   for  another  day.  \________/\________/\___/____/
Because    I   hadn't   graduated    though,
university was out  of the question  and  I moved  one town over  to attend  a
technical college and study "information technology".

   I  moved into a share house, as you do when you're young and have no money,
with four other people. One, a friend from high school moved in with us at the
same time to go to  the same college  and another was  a  friend from our AD&D
group who had moved in the year before.  The other two were people were new to
me but they're not important at the moment.

   I didn't stick with college  very long for  the same reason  I  didn't with
high  school;  I just wanted  to use computers and get  online  and  back then
actually using a computer  was only a small part  of "information technology",
in fact the larger part of the course was math and accounting. It was junk.

   I bring  this  all  up because when I first started this Gopher space I was
looking for things to make it look nice, everyone seems to have a  fun  FIGlet
title but I wanted something different  so was  poking around ASCII art to see
if I could find something suitable.

   In  my  searches I found ASCII art of  Lum from Urusei Yatsura[1]  and that
reminded  me of the friend from high school that I'd moved in with. He'd found
that same piece, printed it out on tractor-feed paper and  stuck it up in  his
bedroom, along with a few others.  One I think was a character from Record  of
Lodoss War but I might be misremembering.

   I went  off the rails a little bit after I moved out, drank quite a bit and
got  rowdy and was also trying to find my place in this new  environment but I
never  really was very good at that so I ended up acting pretty shitty to this
guy who I imagined was "below me" in whatever hierarchy  I thought I  was part
of. He didn't drink with  us, he  went to school to actually try to  study and
not just  to use the computers get on IRC or  the AnimEigo (was  it AnimEigo?)
message  board  and  he  went  home on weekends to  be with his family instead
playing  Magic:  The Gathering or  finding  a party line to call  (the college
library was closed  on  weekends so  no internet  for us!)  to  talk shit with
whoever was around.

   One weekend we were really tying it on,  I forget the exact occasion but it
may have  been  a friend's birthday  party or one  of their "end of the world"
parties, and a friend at  the  time went a little too hard and was throwing up
all over then blacked out. Someone else, drunk,  thought the right thing to do
would be to put him on the guy's bed to sleep it off, since he'd gone home for
the weekend. So they go into his  room and get the  guy on the bed and see all
the his  nerdy shit on  the  walls and  start messing with  it because they're
higher on the totem pole now for probably no reason other than the guy  wasn't
around to defend himself and protect his shit.

   And I go along with it because I want to protect MY place in the hierarchy.
We defaced his shit with scribbles and drawings of  dicks  and who  knows what
else, including some  of  the  guy's own  artwork  I  think, irreplaceable. We
messed  with his stuff  and rolled blunts with  his AD&D characters' character
sheets.

   It was all truly shameful and, while that was probably  the worst of it, it
wasn't an isolated incident. I was bullied quite a bit in school and like most
kids  who are would bully in  my own right,  but that  doesn't excuse it and I
still hate myself for not being a better person.

   Some  time later my mental health got extra bad  and cut off contact with a
bunch of people, including him, entirely. Or maybe he already had with me.

   More  recently  I found  him again  on Facebook,  he seems like  he's doing
really well and  that makes me  happy. I sent him  a message even though it'll
likely be one-way, to apologise for being a piece of shit a million years ago.


[1] gopher://baud.baby/0/files/lum.txt



EOF