The day my addiction began...

What better day to start a brand new, all life consuming addiction, than on your 25th birthday. Or as we online folks know it...a new game. I've been playing computer games since my mom brought home our first computer. This computer was a fossil like Tandy (if you know what that is...yeah, you know) that we actually connected to the internet once. That was a laugh. By the time I was 15 I was deep into the online gaming/chatting scene. I played on a site called Mplayer, my main game being Scarab. Scarab was an old school shooter game that I never actually got good at, but ended up in a 'clan' of super nerds who all had a crush on me. Mainly because I was young, skinny and practically the only girl. I played with this group for 2 years, even met up with them all in the back woods of Alabama at one of our clan-mate's shooting range/pizzeria. Yeah, I know right?

Anyway, the point of this post, after my little trip down memory lane, is this last online game addiction. I was at home, celebrating my 25th birthday alone while my toddlers slept, when my much cooler little sister dropped by. She and I are prone to late night spur of the moment hang out sessions that normally involve alcohol, smoking and/or some disgusting late night drive thru fare. This particular night was special and not because it was my birthday. My sister was over to show off her shiny new laptop. This was exciting for both of us because the poor thing had been computer-less for a few years. That is a torture I can only imagine and cringe at. In the process of showing off this sexy piece of laptop heaven, she introduced me to a game she used to play before her last computer bit the dust. A little game called Puzzle Pirates. Actually, if you want me to make it sound even more ridiculous, the full name is Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Yes. You read that correctly. Here I was, 25 years old with two kids and a soon to be ex husband and I was signing into this ridiculous game in the middle of the night. This started out as an innocent pass time for my sister and I in the late hours of boredom we both shared. I immediately prejudged this game as a kiddy game. You play puzzles designed to emulate actual duties of a scurvy pirate. Not only that, but you have this little pirate person that you can buy clothes, houses, swords, ships, etc for. This game is played internationally and you can chat with your fellow players, form a crew or even a flag together. As soon as I started playing this game, I immediately decided that the only path for my little pirate was world domination. Or ocean domination. I wanted a crew and a flag and I wanted to kick ass and take names while I did it. I mean, this game is available to 13 year olds and up, how hard could this task really be? My sister and I plotted how the 'twisted sisters' would take it all over. We joined the first little crew that invited us and we bought our first ship and house together. It was boring after a few minutes of playing around, but we had fun chatting with new people and establishing our reputation as deviants. We even dressed our pirates as twins when we flirted with random pirates.

This was the start of what I thought would be a fun game. The beginning of my 'being something' in this little online world since I was basically nothing in real life.

What I didn't know is that I would end up hopelessly obsessed with the game and the people there. I didn't know that before it all came to an end a month ago that I would delve into some minor hacking, pose as the good guy while playing the evil son of a bitch behind everyone's backs, and eventually...'fall in love' with a young pirate from London.

This was only the beginning...