So, the other night, my date brought over a movie called The Gamers. It’s a little D&D cult classic, basically a bunch of college guys with a couple of cameras, who document their D&D game in the basement of their school (which you can watch – in all its cheesy, low budget glory – on YouTube)
So I’m sitting there watching the opening where the guys are heading down the hall to start the game, and I’m thinking, man, that dude just to the right of camera looks really familiar.
And then they all sit down around the gaming table again, and yeah, seriously, that DM looks really familiar. I started paying attention to the opening credits, and, lo and behold, there it was:
“Matt Cameron” was playing the DM.
I actually had to pause the movie and burst into uncontrollable laughter.
Matt Cameron and I went to elementary school together. We were best friends for a couple of years from third-firth grade. He introduced me to all of the SF books in the library. When I was 16, I saw him again when he came to a production of Macbeth at my highschool where I played Banquo. The last time I saw him, I was dropping him off at his house after taking him out to dinner with the theater crew.
Appparently, Matt got into theater hijinks of his own in college… I totally should have known. He always did have a love for text-based computer games. It was only a matter of time before he found D&D.
According to Wikipedia, he’s now a lawyer in Boston, which is much closer to what I figured he’d be doing with his life. Matt was one of those prodigies who skips grades and attends Gifted classes. I loved hanging out with him, and I was sad when we started to grow apart in the fifth grade. He was a really neat friend. And, honestly, I missed all of the book recommendations.
So then today, I’m randomly clicking Stumbleupon links and I get this page on the Scientific American website, and just before I go to click through again I’m thinking, “Man, that guy looks really familiar.”
Pause.
“No, really, that guy looks really familiar.” I checked the name, and there it was: Chen-Bo. Chen-Bo was one of Jenn’s classmates at Northwestern. He came over a couple of times, as I recall, and was in attendance at several social gatherings Jenn let me tag along on. He was pretty awesome.
It’s kind of weird to realize that all of the adults out in the world now are, you know, your contemporaries? Because that means that, uh, you must be an adult now, too, with your book deal and corp writing job?
Um?
