A Friend Indeed
A friend doesn’t let another friend be killed by a cylon. Forget Charlie Brown, forget fortune cookies, forget magic eight balls or priests or your human philosophies. I know the meaning of friendship. No cylons. Nyet. Never.
Tonight, Kevin killed us all. The filthy rotten robot-lover. He rolled the dice, and with a casual flick of card, and push of some flimsy plastic playing pieces, he destroyed humanity. Afterwards, we had bright pink French fancies.
It was a fantastic night.
I can measure my friendships in games. As a child, I learned old maid, snap, and countless games of card, played in front of the fire. I remember sitting on the mat, plaiting the fringes, and oh-so-casually sliding unwanted cards underneath. I know that Nellie saw me; I’m a rubbish liar now, and I have really no reason to believe that I was a master of deception at the age of seven. But we understood each other, Nellie and I. Nellie was in her eighties, and I was not yet in double figures, but that doesn’t matter in the slide and slap of card against card.
(‘Which one is Shithead? Oh! We called it Switch. I beat my brother several times. He grew angry, and threw a chair at me.’)
Falling in love was marked by my introduction to Diplomacy. Diplomacy: the most horrendous, back-stabbing, heart-rending game in existence. We huddled in bedrooms and bathrooms, hallways and doorways, making alliances and gleefully trampling over friendship in a giddy rise to the top. Afterwards, my love and I lay in bed and giggled. I knew his friends now, he said. You only truly know a person after you’ve played them in Diplomacy.
(‘Game of Life – there’s a pointless waste of time. It penalizes anyone who gets a college education. But you can sell your children at the end. That’s good.’)
In Ballina, we built labyrinths of lego. The tiny brick people climbed fortresses and playgrounds, and exotic landscapes of impossible dimensions. Late in the night, I sat at the table, drunk with happiness. Daniel slapped playing cards to his forehead, and casually outbluffed us all. I thought my chest would burst.
(Certain moves are remembered, for years after the fact. David O’Brien, you delightful cad. I still can’t believe you invaded Norway.)
My nights have been filled with plasticine and wine, nights of being pixies and dwarves and wily munchkins. Andrew, Ruth and I, when we turned out all the lights, lit candles, and wrote winding stories in bit pieces. Kevin, his face alight, wiping the board in a fit of carefree slaughter. Rachel, assembling a combine harvester from bricks. The meekest of my friends become the most outright bastard over a game of board and card, and I love them for it.
Even the filthy rotten robot-lovers. Especially them.
