I'm not that cool of a guy. My favorite subject's calculus, if that's any kind of indicator. It's also my hobby, not to mention my sport (you'd be surprised how dangerous a calculator and pencil can be, blisters), as well as my extracurricular activity (there's actually a club for people like me after school... I know), and my leisurely activity when I'm at home. I spend my weekends playing Everquest and Ragnorok online when I'm not doing math, and if it weren't for that, I doubt I'd ever get to talk to females. We're weird and we know it. We can't find the secret passage or the ogre's claw and we get mad. Seriously, we get pissed off. We're like, what the fuck. Where's that fucking claw. God damn it God. If you're up there, I'll do anything you want if it means I can find that damned claw.

I'm not a people person. The last friend I had stopped talking to me when he realized he was popular. Just woke up one day and said, wow, I'm hot, aren't I. We tried hanging out but we didn't have anything in common anymore. All I wanted to talk about was what level my guy was at in Everquest. All he wanted to talk about were friday night football games and whoever he was doing at the time. It got old. So I told him I thought we should try some time apart. He was pretty offended come to think of it. Scratch that, so maybe it was me that stopped talking to him when I realized he was popular. The bastard. I guess I was just jealous. Back in middle school we were one and the same. Scrawny with glasses and acne. Only his went away and mine didn't, and since I didn't like moving around too much, save to pick up a fallen eraser or give my mouse a good click or two, I didn't fill out the way he did in wrestling.

Talking online's easier. I can say just about whatever I want to and not have to worry about the consequences. It's good stuff I tell you. Not a thing in the world's better. I call them my real buddies. Cause, quite sadly, they're always there. Any time of the day, any day of the year, I can guarantee you the guys I talk to online are still going to be online no matter how many times I check. And hey, I like that. They're like roommates almost, except I don't have to see them in person, and if we get mad, ending the conversation is just a click away.

I do have a particularly good friend online though. We met a couple years back, when I realized I didn't have any real friends anymore. He just popped up. Mysterymann2000. We go together like peanut butter and jelly, and he reaffirms my belief that I can remain single the rest of my life if necessary. With guys like him around, I can fight off the primal instinct to mate pretty damned easily. It's just not as important to me as it is with most people. I mean, I LIKE girls, common. I do. I like 'em, I just don't get to like them. I even tried asking one out. An easy target too. She weighed like, four times more than me and had enough grease in her hair to fry an egg, but alas, I thought, a little soap, a little bath, she'd clean right up. Boy was I embarrassed. She took one look at me and laughed in my face, with a miss piggy-like snort and a, as if, Dork!

Anyway, my main dude online. We make up these game things. Build those first person shooter games or make puzzles or something and send it to the other one and challenge him to beat it. He's never gotten the best of me yet. Not that I've gotten the best of him or anything either but hey, I'm working on it. So one day he sends me this riddle, along with a photo of a river and two guys paddling along on it, and it says, if person one drops a paperclip into a big body of water, how does person two find it? I click on the picture and it goes to a interactive cartoon he must have spent one too many hours working on with the two guys throwing little fishing hooks into the water and pulling out animated trout and boots. It was cute. I didn't really get it though. I think too much. I know it but I can't change it. And I wonder stupid things like, what the paperclip would be doing in the water in the place and why I should care. Is it lost? Was it passed down generation to generation from grandpappy to dad to son for years and years? Really, just go buy a new paperclip. Why go to all the trouble for it. It's worthless.

So no matter what I did to his cartoon, or what I clicked, or how much I thought about it, I couldn't figure it out. It was dumb. But I was becoming obsessed. I started building devices to simulate the situation. I filled pools of water and stuck the clip in it and tried magnets and fishing hooks and even toy boots like in his message. Nothing worked. I used my math skills to devise illogical math equations that could lead me to a final solution. It was driving me crazy. What the hell was he talking about? Was the paperclip his? Did he need it that badly? I didn't care what state he lived in anymore, I'd fucking buy him a new one and send it to him. Geez! Anything to make it over and done with.

It was a defeat. I admitted it to him. I told him, I give up. Tell me the answer. I gotta know what it is. And then, just as I feared, he laughed out a loud one of those annoying solutions that make you realize it was a trick and unsolvable to begin with. He said something about it being impossible, that the only way to find it would be to ask the person where he dropped it off and then get it. I was irritated, so much so I wanted to cry about it like a little kid. I tried so hard to find the answer and that was the best he could come up with. I was pissed. Dumb things like that, they're the things that get me mad. I practically hated him for it. But then, he went on to say something else. He told me that it was supposed to be a message and not to get all mad, that people didn't have to do everything on their own and make a big deal out of the littlest things. Just ask, and someone'll help you out. It's not that hard. And that he didn't think it was normal to go through everything without any real friends.

Basically, turns out the guy I'd been talking to the entire time was my good old buddy from way back when that I dumped when he got popular. He made up an identity online just so we could still hang out, even if it was in a made-up world. I guess I meant that much to him. Hahah, guess it served me right for throwing away a twelve year friendship just cause I got a little jealous.