The Boston Moth: Outgrown (w/ supplemental materials)
Tuesday night, I was at Oberon for the January Moth storyslam. mishak was there, as was Linder and an ex co-worker, LaBadassita and her boyfriend B. The theme for the month was Outgrown and I had thrown my name in the hat, but we had gotten through five storytellers, to intermission without my name being called. Linder asked, "so do you have to put up with the tension every time you come out to one of these things."
"Oh, when I did my first one, I was a ball of nerves, but now, I'll just roll with it. I'm ready if I get called. If not, it's still a good show so far."
At some point further in intermission, they asked me how the story scoring worked and I just shrugged. "It's kind of arbitrary, actually. People just write down a score between 1 and 10 based on criteria like appropriate for theme and quality of the story. But what's quality? That's up to the judge.
"I can tell you, though, from having been to, like, five of these now ... being funny gets you points. Stories with an upbeat ending with a bit of humor tend to do better than others. People want to see you win. Having some kind of human connection is good, and it's sometimes really powerful to start with humor and then throw in a serious twist that makes the audience think. But a total downer story? Even if it's well told. Those don't do so well."
I got called on the seventh slot. The hook for this story came to me about two weeks ago, but I kept going back and forth between two variants. The first version was basically a retelling of Passing It On with some additional background, but then I started thinking about game mechanics again and went with the Nerd variant instead. I haven't quite decided which one I like more. But I'm putting them both up to get your opinion. It starts with the prologue and has the two variants below.
15 years ago, I bought a bicycle. I was living in Inman Square and as most of you know, Inman is one of the few squares in Cambridge that doesn't have a Red Line stop named after it, so I bought a bike as an alternative to walking to Central Square for my job in downtown Boston. It was a cheap little hybrid. Mountain bike frame with road bike tires. and it was great for riding around the city.
Then, one summer, a friend, who lived in Newton, decided to host a cookout and I thought that it might be fun to ride out there. I mapped it out, saw that it was 12 miles and though it was three times as long as anything I'd done before, rather than think that was intimidating, thought it would be an adventure. This may be the beginning of the crazy. But it was fun. I rode out past the Charles River, into the rolling hills of Newton, past the last stop on the Green Line and even over 128. When I got to 128, I was all, 'oh my god, this is like that point in the map where it's written Here Be Dragons.' I felt like an intrepid explorer. And by the time I got to the cookout and people were coming up to me saying, "OMG did you really ride all the way out here?" I felt like a God. A God with a sore ass, but , hey ... Also a God who was not too proud to hitch a ride back to the city.
After that adventure a friend asked me to join her on a charity ride for Multiple Sclerosis. It was two 75 mile rides back to back and eventhough I spent the summer actually training for that, it was still a much harder ride. I had committed a few rookie errors with not pacing myself and not eating properly; so I bonked. That's a technical term. A bonk is what happens when you're an endurance athlete and you run out of calories ... and when you run out of calories your sense of adventure goes with it. Still, I powered through it and finished, not gloriously, but finished. And I was hooked.
The MS ride was followed by a NY Boston AIDS ride, which was followed by me buying a touring road bike, something meant to be ridden across the country, and I'd take it on weekend tours out to Western or Central Mass.
(NERD Variant)
I don't know how many of you have played D&D or Warcraft, I mean, anyone? Well, there's this mechanic in roleplaying games called character levels. Where, most players start out any game as a Level One character, a rookie, a beginner. Before you can save the world or kill the dragon, you're given maybe a dagger and a suit of leather armor and a quest to go kill some rats that are plaguing the kitchen. And as you kill rats or do quests, you gain experience, until you reach a threshold in your experience where you advance to a new level. You level up and become stronger, better or more powerful. You swap that dagger for a longsword and you start fighting goblins, then ogres, then giants then dragons.
I was leveling up as I was doing this riding, and eventually I had discovered this sport called randonneuring, which is long distance unsupported endurance cycling. They're timed events start at about 125 miles and go up to 375 miles, which you have to do in, like, 40 hours. Riding up to the Green Mountains of Vermont and back over a weekend, bringing whatever tools you needed to fix any problems and feeding yourself along the way. These were adventures in every sense of the word and just to get to the start of these events, I had to ride 13 miles, the same distance as that cookout I went to 15 years ago.
So, I was on one of these crazy long 250 mile rides from the Berkshires to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York and had gotten a flat. While I was fixing the flat, an elderly couple had rolled up to me and asked if I needed help. I nearly had the flat replaced so I told them that I was fine but they went on and asked me where I was riding from and -- I should say that I always hate getting this question on a ride like this, because there's no way to be honest without sounding like a boastful asshole -- I just said, "umm... Massachusetts. I started at one this morning."
And they said, "oh, well, we're just going on a 12 mile loop around the lake." They had hybrid bikes like the one that I first used when I started.
You know ... the other thing I should also say about these roleplaying games is that once you finish one and save the world, you can begin a new adventure as a first level character, and you're back to killing rats in a sewer. The best games manage to present challenges that are suited for your level. So, even those rats? At first level? They're still matters of life and death, and they're still exciting and it still makes for a memorable adventure. When you just finished saving the world, it's great and humbling to be reminded what it's like to be fighting for your life against a rat the size of a housecat with a dagger that's seen better days.
So when this couple told me that they were doing just a 12 mile loop, I could remember what sort of adventure that was like, and I said to them "actually, that sounds awesome. I hope you have a great ride."
Thank you.
(Ex-Girlfriend Variant)
When I got the touring bike, I sold my old hybrid to a friend who lived in Cambridge, and from time to time, I'd go to a party at his place or we'd meet at a bar somewhere and I'd see the old bike chained up to a post. He had made changes to it. Swapped the seatpost, got new handlebars, so it looked a little different; but when I'd see it, it was like seeing an old girlfriend ... someone you had cared for, who may have been your first love. And, even if you broke up with them, you knew it wasn't because of them. It was you. And so you still maintained a fondness for them, hope that they were being treated right. I'd run my hand along the top tube of the frame, finding old nicks of paint and artifacts of our time together.
The touring bike and I had our own adventures, one of which was this sport randonneuring, which is long distance unsupported endurance cycling. They're timed events start at about 125 miles and go up to 375 miles, which you have to do in, like, 40 hours. Riding up to the Green Mountains of Vermont and back over a weekend, bringing whatever tools you needed to fix any problems and feeding yourself along the way. These were adventures in every sense of the word and just to get to the start of these events, I had to ride 13 miles, the same distance as that cookout I went to 15 years ago.
And, at a certain point with extreme distances like these, bike fit becomes really important. Little details like installing small generators so you can ride through the night become critical. So eventually, I outgrew my touring bike and got a bike that was custom built for me, made by a craftsman in Holliston who welds these by hand one at a time.
The touring bike? That sat in the basement for a while. I had ideas for it and kept it around as a spare; but eventually, when I had to move, I realized that I needed to pare down my belongings and chose to sell it. I had posted it on Craigslist for not a lot of cash. I was more interested in getting rid of it and using the cash from that to cover moving expenses.
So, this kid named Joe came by to pick it up, and when I sold it to him, I said, "ok, dude, you have to realize that this touring bike is built for adventure. You can use it for commuting, but it's happiest when it's pointed to the horizon. So, if you buy it, I want you to promise me that you'll do something awesome with it."
So two weeks later, without any prior distance or bike camping experience, this guy Joe took my old touring bike and rode it to Florida. He posted photos to Facebook, and it was like that other ex-girlfriend. The one who may not have been your first love, but who you maybe moved in with, and for whom things didn't work out either, but you stay close and they post a photo from their wedding that makes you smile once you see them: laughing, happy and free.
"Oh, when I did my first one, I was a ball of nerves, but now, I'll just roll with it. I'm ready if I get called. If not, it's still a good show so far."
At some point further in intermission, they asked me how the story scoring worked and I just shrugged. "It's kind of arbitrary, actually. People just write down a score between 1 and 10 based on criteria like appropriate for theme and quality of the story. But what's quality? That's up to the judge.
"I can tell you, though, from having been to, like, five of these now ... being funny gets you points. Stories with an upbeat ending with a bit of humor tend to do better than others. People want to see you win. Having some kind of human connection is good, and it's sometimes really powerful to start with humor and then throw in a serious twist that makes the audience think. But a total downer story? Even if it's well told. Those don't do so well."
I got called on the seventh slot. The hook for this story came to me about two weeks ago, but I kept going back and forth between two variants. The first version was basically a retelling of Passing It On with some additional background, but then I started thinking about game mechanics again and went with the Nerd variant instead. I haven't quite decided which one I like more. But I'm putting them both up to get your opinion. It starts with the prologue and has the two variants below.
15 years ago, I bought a bicycle. I was living in Inman Square and as most of you know, Inman is one of the few squares in Cambridge that doesn't have a Red Line stop named after it, so I bought a bike as an alternative to walking to Central Square for my job in downtown Boston. It was a cheap little hybrid. Mountain bike frame with road bike tires. and it was great for riding around the city.
Then, one summer, a friend, who lived in Newton, decided to host a cookout and I thought that it might be fun to ride out there. I mapped it out, saw that it was 12 miles and though it was three times as long as anything I'd done before, rather than think that was intimidating, thought it would be an adventure. This may be the beginning of the crazy. But it was fun. I rode out past the Charles River, into the rolling hills of Newton, past the last stop on the Green Line and even over 128. When I got to 128, I was all, 'oh my god, this is like that point in the map where it's written Here Be Dragons.' I felt like an intrepid explorer. And by the time I got to the cookout and people were coming up to me saying, "OMG did you really ride all the way out here?" I felt like a God. A God with a sore ass, but , hey ... Also a God who was not too proud to hitch a ride back to the city.
After that adventure a friend asked me to join her on a charity ride for Multiple Sclerosis. It was two 75 mile rides back to back and eventhough I spent the summer actually training for that, it was still a much harder ride. I had committed a few rookie errors with not pacing myself and not eating properly; so I bonked. That's a technical term. A bonk is what happens when you're an endurance athlete and you run out of calories ... and when you run out of calories your sense of adventure goes with it. Still, I powered through it and finished, not gloriously, but finished. And I was hooked.
The MS ride was followed by a NY Boston AIDS ride, which was followed by me buying a touring road bike, something meant to be ridden across the country, and I'd take it on weekend tours out to Western or Central Mass.
(NERD Variant)
I don't know how many of you have played D&D or Warcraft, I mean, anyone? Well, there's this mechanic in roleplaying games called character levels. Where, most players start out any game as a Level One character, a rookie, a beginner. Before you can save the world or kill the dragon, you're given maybe a dagger and a suit of leather armor and a quest to go kill some rats that are plaguing the kitchen. And as you kill rats or do quests, you gain experience, until you reach a threshold in your experience where you advance to a new level. You level up and become stronger, better or more powerful. You swap that dagger for a longsword and you start fighting goblins, then ogres, then giants then dragons.
I was leveling up as I was doing this riding, and eventually I had discovered this sport called randonneuring, which is long distance unsupported endurance cycling. They're timed events start at about 125 miles and go up to 375 miles, which you have to do in, like, 40 hours. Riding up to the Green Mountains of Vermont and back over a weekend, bringing whatever tools you needed to fix any problems and feeding yourself along the way. These were adventures in every sense of the word and just to get to the start of these events, I had to ride 13 miles, the same distance as that cookout I went to 15 years ago.
So, I was on one of these crazy long 250 mile rides from the Berkshires to Saratoga Springs in upstate New York and had gotten a flat. While I was fixing the flat, an elderly couple had rolled up to me and asked if I needed help. I nearly had the flat replaced so I told them that I was fine but they went on and asked me where I was riding from and -- I should say that I always hate getting this question on a ride like this, because there's no way to be honest without sounding like a boastful asshole -- I just said, "umm... Massachusetts. I started at one this morning."
And they said, "oh, well, we're just going on a 12 mile loop around the lake." They had hybrid bikes like the one that I first used when I started.
You know ... the other thing I should also say about these roleplaying games is that once you finish one and save the world, you can begin a new adventure as a first level character, and you're back to killing rats in a sewer. The best games manage to present challenges that are suited for your level. So, even those rats? At first level? They're still matters of life and death, and they're still exciting and it still makes for a memorable adventure. When you just finished saving the world, it's great and humbling to be reminded what it's like to be fighting for your life against a rat the size of a housecat with a dagger that's seen better days.
So when this couple told me that they were doing just a 12 mile loop, I could remember what sort of adventure that was like, and I said to them "actually, that sounds awesome. I hope you have a great ride."
Thank you.
(Ex-Girlfriend Variant)
When I got the touring bike, I sold my old hybrid to a friend who lived in Cambridge, and from time to time, I'd go to a party at his place or we'd meet at a bar somewhere and I'd see the old bike chained up to a post. He had made changes to it. Swapped the seatpost, got new handlebars, so it looked a little different; but when I'd see it, it was like seeing an old girlfriend ... someone you had cared for, who may have been your first love. And, even if you broke up with them, you knew it wasn't because of them. It was you. And so you still maintained a fondness for them, hope that they were being treated right. I'd run my hand along the top tube of the frame, finding old nicks of paint and artifacts of our time together.
The touring bike and I had our own adventures, one of which was this sport randonneuring, which is long distance unsupported endurance cycling. They're timed events start at about 125 miles and go up to 375 miles, which you have to do in, like, 40 hours. Riding up to the Green Mountains of Vermont and back over a weekend, bringing whatever tools you needed to fix any problems and feeding yourself along the way. These were adventures in every sense of the word and just to get to the start of these events, I had to ride 13 miles, the same distance as that cookout I went to 15 years ago.
And, at a certain point with extreme distances like these, bike fit becomes really important. Little details like installing small generators so you can ride through the night become critical. So eventually, I outgrew my touring bike and got a bike that was custom built for me, made by a craftsman in Holliston who welds these by hand one at a time.
The touring bike? That sat in the basement for a while. I had ideas for it and kept it around as a spare; but eventually, when I had to move, I realized that I needed to pare down my belongings and chose to sell it. I had posted it on Craigslist for not a lot of cash. I was more interested in getting rid of it and using the cash from that to cover moving expenses.
So, this kid named Joe came by to pick it up, and when I sold it to him, I said, "ok, dude, you have to realize that this touring bike is built for adventure. You can use it for commuting, but it's happiest when it's pointed to the horizon. So, if you buy it, I want you to promise me that you'll do something awesome with it."
So two weeks later, without any prior distance or bike camping experience, this guy Joe took my old touring bike and rode it to Florida. He posted photos to Facebook, and it was like that other ex-girlfriend. The one who may not have been your first love, but who you maybe moved in with, and for whom things didn't work out either, but you stay close and they post a photo from their wedding that makes you smile once you see them: laughing, happy and free.