“Winter on the Isle of Sci is windy, cold and wet. The days are dark and short, the nights dark and everlasting. The land is battered by fierce northern winds, which blast icy rain and snow by day, and gust through the roof thatch by night. The sun rises low–if it rises at all–and hovers close to the horizon, barely skirting the hilltops before losing heart and sinking once more into the icy abyss of night.”
~ Stephen Lawhead, The Paradise War

Winter is a dark time. Things get cold. I don’t mean just the weather, but that is a good place to begin. My husband is one of those rare individuals who doesn’t vehemently despise the icy abyss we call Wisconsin in winter, not only enduring but being warm despite it.

“One thing I like about winter,” he says every so often, “Is how good it feels to warm up after coming in from the cold.”
He describes stepping into a warm room, shrugging off a winter coat, then sipping hot chocolate or coffee. The clinging chill streams off clothes and skin until cold itself is just a memory. Perhaps there will be gingerbread cookies to share, or something equally delicious and seasonal, and a tree in the corner shimmering with tinsel and ornaments.

Regardless of tradition, I am often struck by the absurdness of winter decorations. Red glass balls hang everywhere to no practical end. Blinking lights and brass bells add their noise to what we see and hear already. Oversized socks no one except the Abominable Snowman could wear are tacked on the wall or the mantle. We bend pieces of evergreen into circle patterns and hang them on the doors, on cars, anything with a flat surface. We sing a lot (or some people do) about how happy life is…when obviously it’s not.

Our clothes are perpetually dampened and frozen to our bodies. Car windows freeze, forcing us to open the car door at the drive-thru; snowfall ruins the upholstery. Ice on the roads turns vehicles into heavy toboggans and the term ‘bumper cars’ takes on poignant meaning. Some of us leave home when it’s dark and the daylight has come and gone by the time we return, like the sun just gave up after Halloween. We’re vitamin deficient and downtrodden. Stepping outdoors may be gambling with one’s life, or at least bones if one slips on the icy walk and suffers an unfortunate fall. It’s too dangerous to go outside–or too inconvenient–and the grocery supply dwindles with our reluctance to venture out. Now we’re all of the above, and starving (or else, learning there are one hundred ways to prepare rice, and that expired milk doesn’t actually kill you when consumed after the expiration date).

I find myself lingering at the window by my front door, craning my head to see as much as possible through the narrow pane. I can just see the evergreens clustered at the far side of the parking lot. Their branches are iced with thick, deathly white, but life endures beneath, the color of the forest. My breath catches when I see it. If I venture outside and brush the snow away, if I put my face close to the glossed needles, I will smell it: Sharp pine, ever living when other life fails. Soon enough, the snow will be gone, the sun will return. I will see green again.

Then I realize why we hang green on our doors, and place bright colors–pieces of the life we can’t see anymore–around us. We are reminding ourselves that all is not lost.  We make these efforts and more to rise above the despair that winter throws upon us. This is how tradition is made, reminding us of a time when we were, for a moment, warm.

Some gestures extend through time out of mind and some are new, just found perhaps in recent weeks. In dark times we put up lights and bright things to give ourselves hope of what we do not see. Sometimes those things become milestones: Beacons lining the road to remind us we’ve come through this season before, and we will again.

Lights, vivid ornaments, hot chocolate–these stand for nothing in themselves. A blanket is only a blanket. Fire is only a release of wood’s energy. It is how we utilize these things that gives them value.

I was driving the other day when I had a recurring thought come into my head.  I’ve had conversations before about how useful Mario Kart would be in the driving world of today.  I was driving in excess that day, a total of 3 hours, which is quite a lot for me. There are days when I don’t go outside of my home, literally, but that’s another story.  As such, I had a great amount of time on my hands to think. My thoughts began to race as my car was set to cruise control. I began to think about things from the stresses of life to the most random ideas. My aimless pondering then came to a screeching halt as I hit traffic in the oddest time of day. It was at this time my Mario Kart mode booted up.

If only I had a… My mind began thinking off all the possibilities of items I could instantly drop. However, I wanted to think of a strategic way to this. After all, you never know what those clue boxes will drop.

I first had to determine what character I would be. When I used to own at MK64, I typically would choose Bowser or Yoshi. Some players would shake their head at this, but somehow I knew how to make the best of those guys and win. In retrospect, being the dwarf size that I am, I think I would most resemble Toad. I think Toad would be the best fit for me now, although I would have to accept the fact that every time I got hit I would cry out, “Ooowww, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!”

Having my character chosen, I then began to analyze what items I would most use and in what situations they would be best for. Stuck in stop-and-go traffic and in a hurry? Time to pull out my star. Is that some idiot I see who can’t merge causing us to suddenly break? You’ve got a blue shell coming your way, my friend. You want to speed up right as I’m attempting to pass you? I think a red shell is in order for you. Whoops, I was the jerk who cut you off that time –time for ghost mode. Geez, those mushrooms would come in handy to get through those intersections that always like to turn red on me so quickly. To those who love tailgating me, I must warn you, I will not hold back from dropping a question mark box for you. Last but certainly not least, a shout out to those who aren’t content in staying in 1 lane for more than 60 seconds, a lightning bolt is in store. As such, I will gladly run over your bite-sized body, leaving you thin as a cracker and swaying back and forth in the air like a feather.

I seriously don’t suffer from road rage… not a clinical diagnosis away. I do, however, like to entertain the thought of living in the MK64 world.  In this world of people who seem like they got their driver’s license out of a Cracker Jack box, this is my way to cope. So, for now, I will just mentally send you little items to show you my opinion on your driving skills.

I once was taught that anything can be addicting if it gives you some amount of pleasure.  Gaming is no exception.  Whether it’s MMORPGs, RPGs, console games, or LARPing, each of them exposes players to a new world than the one they’ve been living.  Suddenly, one more level doesn’t fulfill us, we count down the days to a new expansion, and it isn’t “just a game” anymore.  Even our language goes through a weird metamorphosis.

I wasn’t always a gamer.  Sure, I played some games here and there, but I wouldn’t have called myself a gamer until I met my husband.  I’ll never forget the first time I heard him talking with his friends in gamer language. “Your rogue is a twink so you were able to pwn some noobs?” I questioned with a raised eyebrow. “It’s gamer talk,” he replied.  “Oh…” I felt completely out of the loop.  As I listened to their conversation carry, I felt as if I had to learn this new language but was a little turned off at the lack of proper grammar this new vocabulary would include.  Yet, here I am today gladly telling you I’ve become one of your fellow gamers.  Only, I’m finding it hard to transition back to “real” life.

You see, I, like most of you, forget that most of the world doesn’t speak geeky gamer language.  Calling some idiot driver a level 1 noob won’t really offend them; rather, probably just confuse them.  I find myself not just using “LoL or lawl” but shouting, “Ding!” when I see my son learn a new “skill”, asking if something happened in game or “irl”, or almost saying “woot” instead of “amen” in church.  Just a few weeks ago, I was transcribing for a new doctor who obviously was struggling.  My first thought was, ‘What a noob.’  I’m pretty bad with this, but I probably wouldn’t even fit the definition of gamer to real gamers.

I acknowledge that I’m not the only one who brings the game with them to real life.  I now laugh when I hear people say, “It’s just a game.”  It does become a culture, but I do have to remind myself that I can’t always replace letters with numbers to spell words or tack on a trail of Z’s at the end of words.  However, it’s nice to know there is a community of geeks, just like me, who find gaming addicting and have formed our new little language that I’m still constantly learning.