“Oh wow, that’s great. I just thought I sucked at this.”
“You do.”
We laughed for a minute. And finished driving to the mall. That was the first time Sprocket git behind the wheel of a car.
It was kind of neat teaching another person to drive. His folks weren’t letting him use their car, and his drivers test was coming up. Seemed to me like the right thing to do. Plus everyone should get behind the wheel of a Camaro at least once in their life.
I didn’t have many of these “tender” moments with Sprocket. The kid obviously had some home stuff going on and I was no stranger to that myself. The last time I think I saw my folks in the same place at the same time was a year earlier at my graduation. Before that it was my 14th birthday. It was best to not have them be at the same place at the same time. But that’s a whole other post itself.
Like I said, Sprocket’s home life was kinda shitty. Magic allowed him to get out of the house and do something he was good at without having to bother his folks. He wasn’t particularly strong, and lacked the sort of motivation that would make him excel in school. Was he smart? Meh I couldn’t say really. I don’t think he was stupid. Something about him was utterly pathetic, and as a guy who had to wait til he was 19 to get his first car, I wanted to help him.
March 2000
“Yea I don’t know man I like Fred he’s a really good dude. He pays for food and stuff and he lets me crash when I’m fighting with my dad, but lately he’s been getting really competitive. Like he gets pissed at us when we loose to scrubs. It’s like he’s a fucking football coach. He threaten to hold back his tech if we didn’t start using it better!”
Black is driving, it’s the first Friday I’ve had off in a while. We’re heading down to Jester’s Playhouse, about an hour away, for one of the first FNM events.
“That’s crazy. You know I was looking at my rating online last week and it has him as beating me last week. Remember I beat him.”
“Jesus, who could forget. He sulked and bitched and then stormed out of the storm. Everyone was like ‘Whoa!’ I mean I get it that was like a 50 match win streak. You probably got the full 8K from the round.”
“Yea that’s what I’m saying. Why did it go in that way? Did you record it wrong?”
“No way man, you beat him I can remember clicking you for that round.”
I paused, trying to figure out if maybe I had made a mistake. I was straight edge (for lack of a better term) and my memory was pretty sharp. No I definitely recall clicking on Black
“Plus you played the next three rounds, you got paired against other x-0’s.”
“No, yea, I played you in the next round, beat you and when on to win the tourney.”
“If Fred hadn’t left you prolly would have just faced him in the finals. Imagine beating him twice. Dude when I dropped the laptop off that night he was so fucking pissed.”
“Wait you give Fred the laptop?”
“Yea, he emails the reports in. I don’t have Internet at the store. It’s his laptop after all. I mean it’s mine, really, but he paid for it. What’s he gonna do steal it from me?”
“Do you think Fred would have changed the result?”
“What? No way, I mean he was upset, but that’s stupid.” I was starting to think that’s exactly what happened. “I probably just misclicked or the program got it wrong, it’s pretty buggy.”
“Ok, just fix it the next time you get a chance.”
“On it!”
This conversation was the start of all my problems. I mean really my problems started much earlier than here but that trip to Jester’s Playhouse would come back to haunt me for the next 5 months. And really for years to come. I leaked a piece of information I thought didn’t matter. Learned that Fred was manipulating tournament reports and realized I was gonna need to confront him. He was already breathing don’t my neck about not beating Black in the round after he lost to him. He really didn’t like Black. Hell, Fred didn’t like a lot of folks.
So after reading last week’s article you could see that, socially speaking, I’ve been through some shit. Honestly though, who hasn’t? I’m not the first Magic player to be bullied in High School nor am I the first to say that the friendships I’ve made because of Magic have been some of the most influential in my life. What is important is that you understand the tone I take when I go down this path and talk about what happened between Fred, Spocket, Black and I. It’s been 15 years and I’m still haunted by some of the things I did, and why I did them. Part of this is making sense of that.
If you’re a long time follower of my articles on the blog you’ve heard me talk about Legends Comics. Legends my my LGS before there was really a such thing as an LGS. In 1995, stores didn’t really have dedicated play space for Magic cards. Legends was a comic shop that became a place to play Magic.
We set up these large wooden boards over the comic bins. By we I actually mean the staff at Legends. At the timeI didn’t work there. I just showed up there every Sunday, or Sorcerous Sunday! In the beginning it was a relatively casual group of kids learning/teaching and playing a formatless game of “What cards does everyone own?” and “Who has cards I’ve never seen for trade?” It was fun and for a 14 year old Zac Clark, it was a haven from my week in high school of overwhelming reading requirements, managing social status in a world I had no experience. Magic was easy then. You just showed up, played cards, traded and friends were made easy. It was the opposite of the real world to me.
It was during this time of my experience in the game that I met Black and Sprocket, separately. Legends had hired me, because if you hang out in a comic shop enough, you eventually get to know everyone. As I was a pretty likable kid, it was a no brainer to bring me on the staff since they didn’t have anyone that played Magic. This set me up with a pretty sweet deal. I made $50 in credit every Sunday. That’s 2 Boxes every month. If you don’t have living expenses and you don’t have anything else to spend your money on then you can really just spend all your money on Magic cards. This was to pay me to work the register from time to time and to hang out and play Magic. Mostly, I played Magic. It was amazing!
So …Black, and Sprocket.
This didn’t mean he was without his faults. Black could be condescending at times and was often down on himself. As a result, being his friend wasn’t always easy. He was polarizing that way. Some folks got him others didn’t. I’m the kind of guy folks feel comfortable around pretty quickly, and not for nothing, I open up around people pretty quickly, growing up I think that was a thing that some of my peers found … unsatisfactory about me. Imagine a 12 year old with a speaking with candor about things like being a child of divorce or growing up around drugs. As an adult you’d feel a little uncomfortable having adult conversations with someone so young, as a child you couldn’t make the connection. Black had some family stuff to get off his chest, and I was much the same. We found a common ground to deal with each other on. Plenty of folks had things to say about him. As is my way now, if I consider someone a friend, I don’t let others talk me out of it.
So like I said Black and I were friends.
Now Sprocket on the other hand was a guy I knew. He was kind of a joke. Sort of the red-headed step-child of the South Jersey MTG scene (yes he was both of those things in real life). In the beginning he was a harmless 12 year old who’s mom dropped him off at the Legends on Sundays. His mom would show up early after shopping and have to drag him out of the store while he was in the middle of a trade or just yell at him for taking too long. I don’t know for a fact what his home life was like. I imagine there was a lot of yelling. He didn’t seem to listen to her much and she didn’t really treat him well the few times I saw her.
Until I met Fred I didn’t really pay much attention to Sprocket other than as another kid at the store. I will say that Sprocket was instrumental in my learning how to draft. He introduced me to the concept one day at the store and we started doing that every week. Really that was the catalyst to the store going towards a more tournament oriented route. Soon, we were filling up the store each week for drafts and Type 2 events.
Sprocket and Black were both very important people in my social circle during my first run at Magic. Looking back now especially, I can see that even more. It’s strange that they both came from broken homes. One guy ended up on the right side of the tracks and the other, not so much. I have a feeling that if with one of them were to read this they’d see that I saw them each a bit differently than they thought. It’s strange now, because for a time I saw each one of these characters as the villain in my story. It’s funny what changes after 15 years.
These dynamics changed a bit once Fred came into the picture. Next week, I’ll be talking about Fred. About how I met him and about how friendship can blind you to the other things going on in your life.