Everybody has their own struggles in life. People have
trouble financially, trying to keep up with bills and feeding the family. Others
have motivation problems, trying to figure what path in life they should take,
and if it’s actually worth it. Another may be experiencing image issues, the
same person that is stuck between two lives, and having to make a hard choice. These
are all things that all types of people have to deal with in their lives at
some point or another.
I have to deal with a loss of community and loneliness. I
have been rejected by society because I am too Asian to be with white people
and too white to be with Asian people. I do not encapsulate what it is to be the
ideal man. And thus, both sexes reject me somewhat. And it also doesn’t help
that I have moved across the nation multiple times, which means I have a new
group of people to reject me all over again. I have become a Lone Wolf,
hardened by nature and furious at society. I am not a leader or a follower. I
am a Wanderer. I follow my own path and my own path only because that is the
only path I know.
And because of all of this, I believe in potatoes.
Let me explain. A couple years back I was invited to a
Closed Beta for a video game I signed up for. There was a small legion of us,
around 2000 people or so that go in right away. It was a small group of hardcore
gamers that wanted to see the game succeed. We would get on voice communications
and countdown to launch.
“Three, two, one and launch!” Silenzium, our launch coordinator,
would always say that before we clicked the big red button.
One day, Silenzium’s child ran into the room while we
were doing our drops. We’ve heard of him before, but he was super ecstatic one
day.
“Three, two…POTATOES
and launch!”
Silenzium’s kid screamed “potatoes” as loud as he could and
all of us roared out laughing on TeamSpeak. We don’t know why it was funny; it
just was. The entire drop turned into people laughing and yelling “POTATOES!”
every time we fought.
The joke manifested into the forums. We started posting potato
recipes and memes to keep the potato train going. We even went as far to beg
the developers to make a mission where if we killed cargo tracks that it would
drop potatoes everywhere. Sadly, that never happened.
Every time we dropped after that moment, our crew would
always go “Three, two, potatoes and launch!” It was unusual thing to band a
community around, but it made us feel a sense of closeness.
I am a Lone Wolf, that fact is true until the end of
time. But sometimes, having some potatoes every once and a while is a nice
change of pace.
