So, what were they? I mean, what were they really? A lot of people will say “oh, it was when I met my Better Half,” or “when my children were born,” or “when someone close to me died.” I’m not denying that those are life-altering events. I’ve been married to my best friend (and even if we’re not married anymore, we’re still best friends). I don’t have any children but I do have a niece who looks just like me and who, for reasons I can’t fathom, adores me. I’ve lost friends and close relatives. So yeah, I know that those things are major life events. But none of them were life-altering. At least not for me.
Simmons: D’you ever wonder why we’re here?
Grif: It’s one of life’s great mysteries, isn’t it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some… cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything, you know, with a plan for us and stuff? I don’t know, man, but it keeps me up at night.
For me, right now, the moments that changed my life stand out in stark contrast to everything else. At the time, they weren’t anything major — or so I would have thought. But, looking back, they were significant. There were only three of them but they significantly altered the trajectory my life was on. Without them…I wouldn’t be where I am today and I wouldn’t be who I am today.
The first moment that forever changed my life happened when I was seven years old. Set the Wayback Machine for 1987. For Christmas 1986, my parents had gotten my brother and I a Nintendo Entertainment System and a TV to play it on. It came with the Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt combo game, two controllers, and the light gun. We were told that once we beat that game, we could get another game.
I can’t remember if I’d beaten Super Mario Bros. or not but I had gotten bored with it. The levels were repetitive. The goals were trite. It wasn’t really that challenging and it couldn’t hold my attention for very long when I was seven. My little brother was only five and didn’t quite have the skills necessary to play through the game (and we didn’t know about all of the warp points so it did get pretty frustrating to get set back pretty far after making our way through five or six worlds) and I didn’t have a lot of patience with him whinging and throwing the controllers around when he lost. Hey, cut me some slack. I was seven and I wasn’t Mother Teresa.
Well, my mother went to Wal-Mart and asked around about a game that might keep me occupied and get me to stop complaining. She and my dad had obviously blown a fair bit of cash on the NES and it was supposed to be The Thing for kids back in 1987. I don’t know who the clerk at the Electronics section was that day but if I ever find him or her, I am going to buy them dinner and kiss them thoroughly and offer to help pay for their kids and grandkids to go to college. Because, that fateful day in 1987, the clerk at Wal-Mart handed my mother the gold cartridge edition of The Legend of Zelda. Mama brought it home and handed it to me. At first, I was just dazzled by the pretty case and the fact that the game was gold and shiny. Mama then told me I had to read the manual and I couldn’t play it until after I had eaten all of my supper. I opened the box, pulled out the manual, and that was it. I was done for. I’m pretty sure I probably inhaled supper at a record-setting rate that evening and then raced to put that game in the console and fire it up.
Oh…that intro screen. It was spiff. It was magic. I can still close my eyes and see it and hear the music. Even now, over twenty years later, it’s clear as day to me. Shigeru Miyamoto, the guy who conceived and developed The Legend of Zelda (among his many other titles) is a genius.
A simple game with a simple story. The bad guy had captured the princess. You were the hero who had to save her by solving eight dungeons and the puzzles therein to get the treasures and the Triforce that would let you enter the ninth dungeon and fight Ganon. But there were no time limits. Every time you died, you could save your progress. You could do the dungeons in just about any order (provided you had the objects necessary to reach the dungeons). You could explore the entire world map. It was completely open. No real rails or anything (other than needing all of the Triforce pieces to get into the last dungeon).
It captured my imagination immediately and it never. ever. let. go.
I don’t know how long it took me to finally beat the game. My Aunt Elaine (whom I called “Aunt ‘Laine”) was into The Legend of Zelda and my friend-across-the-street’s dad was into it. Between them, I eventually did beat the game. Zelda II came out and I still haven’t beaten it (it’s hard). My friend Taylor got a Super Nintendo and we played A Link to the Past whenever she was down visiting her dad. But from the time I was seven until this very day, I have been obsessed with The Legend of Zelda. It’s a great game with a great story that lets you explore. It lets you imagine. It’s the purest form of joy and magic. And, if my mother had not brought it home that day, I wouldn’t have gotten into gaming like I have. My life would have been completely different.
The second life-altering event was a trip to K-Mart for Back to School. I was thirteen. I was surly. I hated shopping. I especially hated shopping for clothes or for shoes. Having to go shopping for clothes and shoes and school supplies? That was my Ninth Circle of Hell. I’d have rather been captured by Communists. Luckily, by then, my mother had twigged on to the fact that I hated shopping and could be placated into submission by a promise that, once she was done with me, I could go look at books. I loved to read. I’d read a lot of Shakespeare’s plays. I’d read most of The Canterbury Tales. Bulfinch’s Mythology. History books. Biographies. Goosebumps. So, the deal was that if I would be good while doing the necessary shopping, I could go look at the books until it was time to check out and go home. I played along and dutifully tried on shoes and pants and dresses and shirts without too much complaining and whinging. Eventually, I was done and allowed to go look at the books. So I did (with a promise I would either be at the book section or in the electronics section when my mom needed to find me).
Whilst perusing the limited selection of books at K-Mart, I found this one book that caught my attention immediately. The title was intriguing and the cover art told enough of what to expect while leaving the rest to imagination that I was instantly transported.
I remember reading through the Prologue while I stood waiting for Mama. It told the story of four voyages. Haplo, the main character, a Patryn who’d escaped the Labyrinth, had traveled to Arianus, to Pyran, to Abbarach, and then to Chelestra. He’d learned and grown. There were elves and humans and dwarves. There were mages. There was love and loss and mystery. I was hooked. This was the kind of book I’d been searching for. It was the kind of story I wanted to tell. At thirteen, I hadn’t heard of Dragonlance or Tolkien. My parents didn’t read those kinds of things. And so I stood there, in K-Mart, reading and falling in love. Finally, there was a genre I could enjoy. A genre I could immerse myself in. These were not only the kinds of stories I wanted to read — they were the kinds of stories I wanted to tell. When my mother found me, I asked her to let me get that book. She checked it over once to make certain it wasn’t some kind of Harlequin romance and then let me get it.
I devoured it. Then, I had to read the four books before it. Dragon Wing, Elven Star, Fire Sea, Serpent Mage. I read them. I wound up joining the Waldenbook’s club. I would call them every week to ask when the next book in the series, Into the Labyrinth would come out. After reading The Death Gate Cycle and following it faithfully, my friends in junior high and high school introduced me to Dragonlance and to the Wheel of Time. From there, I discovered Tolkien and Goodkind and Pratchett and Bradbury and Clarke and Asimov and Heinlein. With my appetite whet, I began writing fantasy stories. I aspired to become a writer. My family tried to tell me that I would have to write “normal” things to make money but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to build worlds and populate them with peoples unimagined as of yet. I wanted to copy the styles of the great writers before me: Jordan and Tolkien and Weis and Hickman.
If I had never read The Hand of Chaos, I might not be where and who I am today. That book…that day in K-Mart, changed my life. It showed me a world and a path that I hadn’t even imagined existed.
The third major event that changed my life was meeting my good friend Chris Holland. I was in college studying history. I had a full-ride scholarship because I was a nerd. And, I was completely hooked on Final Fantasy. MSN had just started up their Communities and anyone with a Hotmail.com account could create an MSN community. I started one based around Final Fantasy VIII and dealing with the real-world historical and linguistic links between the games. I translated Liberi Fatali and One Winged Angel (I’d taken three years of Latin in high school). Chris, or Coach as we knew him then, was running a community called World of FF Music. He and I started talking and we decided to go in on a new website on EZBoard. Eventually, we launched Final Fantasy Legend (now defunct) and I was one of his moderators and content providers. I was more into the theoreticals and the parallels. But, because of him, I started getting into web programming and coding. He was the first person to let me play around as a system administrator. I started to learn about Linux and Unix and web hosting. I learned about MySQL and PHP and setting up accounts and permissions and ownership. I learned what chmod -R 755 did. I met up with some guys in Jackson who were doing an IT start-up and learned more from them. But, if I’d never met Chris, I wouldn’t have known a thing.
Because of him, I wound up meeting and talking to the guy who would eventually become my husband. Because of that and because of helping Coach out with his start-up, I got to know the man I was going to marry and had no qualms about up and moving to France after I graduated from college. Once I was in France and married, I stumbled on a job at Blizzard. In time, my tech background and ability to deal with HTML got me on the web team. And now, I’m seriously thinking about getting some official Linux certifications and finding a job in that area because I’ve just about had it with marketing.
I wouldn’t be where I am and who I am without Chris, though. Without him, I’d have never met my (now ex) husband. I’d never have spent almost a decade in France. I wouldn’t have come to appreciate the US from the outside and the inside. I wouldn’t have come to adore and appreciate Europe. I wouldn’t have learned as much about history and culture and cultural evolution as I have. And it all started with a stupid MSN Community based around Final Fantasy VIII.
At the time they happened, those events were nothing major to me. It was a simple video game or a pleasurable read or a nerdy community. But those three moments altered the course of my life and hurled me on the path I’m on now. I wonder what might happen in the future that will alter my course and put me on a path I’d never imagined existing.
So, what were the moments that changed your life forever?
— G.K.