Subject: "I have a life"
Date: Sun, 21 Jun 1998 00:57:50 EDT
From: Crnicoloff@aol.com

* Generation: Magic

******* Part I - Class Warfare

        "Yeah, well I'd be good at this game, too, but I have a Life."

        I couldn't control it.  My head snapped around until I located the source of
that comment.  I let my eyes take him in for a minute as I pondered my
irritation.  Why did that upset me?

        I didn't know.

        I tossed him an abstracted wave and a smile, a half-apology for staring.  I
remained deep in thought as I turned away.

        If I had to choose one word to describe life, I would say "Choice".  After
all, life icribe life, I would say "Choice".  After
all, life is simply a long series of choices we make.

        This gentleman I encountered obviously wanted to choose to be good at Magic.
He had just lost another game and was tossing the cards from the play field
back into his deck.  He couldn't boast about his loss, so he boasted instead
about his Life.  It was a pure stroke of genius for him to disguise the boast
so cleverly as an excuse for an ego-crushing loss.

        Yep.  He wanted to be good.

        My irritation lessened a little as I pondered on that.  He wanted to be good,
but he didn't have the time.  I just couldn't figure why he'd choose to keep
colliding head-first with a Magic world he couldn't dominate, why he'd choose
to resign himself to whatever excuse-of-the-day he had on his calendar.  If he
wanted fun, he was playing against the wrong players.

        And just what, exactly, is a Life?

        In my time playing Magic, I've heard such an excuse no less than 50 times.
How could this be?  Class warfare surrounding THIS game?  Half the players I
know are disillusioned ex-nerds fresh out of the athletic humiliation of high
school.  Surely they wouldn't perpetrate some sort of pathetic superiority
trip.

        I suppose it's human nature.  People want to believe that whatever they are
doing is superior to whatever everyone else is doing.  Self-esteem, and all
that.

        But why so vicious?  Isn't it enough to believe your own supeugh to believe your own superiority?

        I don't know what a Life is, either.  I think perhaps I've never desired one.
When my friends in 7th grade drooled at expensive cars, I thought only about
how the new car my mom had broken her back to afford was quite good enough,
really.  They played fantasy and picked out the biggest houses they could find
and imagined them to be their very own.  According to my mother, though, the
only part of our house I actually occupied was my room.  She had to drag me to
the dinner table.

        When I got my first job, the shifts about killed me.  Here I was, used to
having time to relax and think, and suddenly I was on my feet non-stop for 8
hours at a time and running a cash register.  My very first decision after
that experience was to minimize the amount of stuff I wanted so I wouldn't
have to work so damned hard.  I left college when I realized I was paying a
lot of money to learn stuff I could teach myself.

        I think lots of the younger tournament players of Magic play because they can
earn supplemental income doing something they would do all day anyway.  The
older players, who forget what life was like before their paths became
indelible, look upon this sort of dabbling as a lack of Responsibility.

        Whatever that means.

        I think it's time for us to take a long hard look at Choice.

        For those players who choose a future that leads them to play Magic all ds them to play Magic all day,
that choice is their own.  Some players have chosen futures that lead them to
lives of hard work.  Those who choose to play will doubtless become amazing
Magic players if they apply themselves to the path they have chosen.  Those
who choose to work will doubtless become financial successes for the same
reasons.

        Both desireable results, mind you.  Those who choose to play want to be great
Magic players.  Those who choose to work want to own yachts.

        So why did this gentleman act so much like he was unhappy with his choice?
Was he unhappy with his failure at Magic as a result of choosing to take a
different path?  Was he unhappy that another person should choose to play for
a living?  Is playing for a living somehow unfair?  Is working for a living
the only choice there is?

I don't know, and I forgot to ask him.

- Cathy Nicoloff