Circles

First Flashback:
I'm sitting in the History Office of a certain university. I was on desk duty, one of the many tasks I picked up to pay my way.

Two friends--fellow grad students--drop by to keep me company. They sit on the Big Red Couch and chat about games they've been playing, specifically the latest first person shooter for their consoles.

"God, it's frustrating," one tells me. "These little punks just stomp us. Like you step out of your base and you're dead. It's so humiliating to be killed by a thirteen year old."

"It isn't just being killed by them," the second chimes in. "It's how they act. They taunt you while they're winning. It sends me into a rage. If I could ever find one of those little prepubescent pukes..."

"What makes you think they're thirteen?" I ask.

"We can hear them," the first friend says. "Over voice chat."

The second rolls his eyes. "We'd be able to tell even if they weren't talking. One of the little bastards was called ChiefSlappahoe."

"Wow." I sigh. "Who does that? Who gets to the Log-In Screen and says 'what I really need is a handle that combines misogyny with a pointless ethnic slur'."

"I'll tell you who," one of them says. "A little punk in dire need of a beating."



Second Flashback:
I'm talking to a guy about his son. The lad's taken to playing the X-Box 360.

"But I had to disconnect the internet," he says. "I won't let him play PvP anymore."

"Really?" I frown, because he doesn't strike me as the censoring type.

"You wouldn't believe the language. They say the most hateful things to my son."

"Any reason or were they just being trolls?"

"Oh, well, it's because he kicks their ass. He wipes the floor with them. It's kind of sad, actually."

"Really? Your boy is like seven and he's beating these kids? How old are they?"

"If their voices are any indicator, about thirteen. And they can't stand it when they're beaten by a younger kid."

***

There's a lot of quotes that might apply: reap what you sow, he who lives by the sword, yadda-yadda-yadda.

I just love to imagine that somewhere a raging tween threw his controller down and shrieked impotent curses through blinking fiber optic tubes at the dead-hand seven year old who carpeted the digital ground with ChiefSlappahoe corpses.