Mary and Daphne #191

I. Want. My. Mary.

Fortunately, I remembered to get one, and I keep her on hand pretty much all the times. She was in our bedroom reading cuz she says she can’t concentrate when I’m playing my virtual murder games (her words). I don’t exactly mind cuz she can be very unreasonable about the language I use when I play. I tell her it’s part of the game, but she says little girls don’t use words and phrases like butt munch, snot muffin, and chumble spuz. Seems like a red herring cuz only adults live in our house, but Mary brings it up anyway.

I trudged up the stairs, made a right, plodded down the hallway, made a left into the master bedroom (it’s where my master sleeps all wrapped around me and stuff), spotted Mary sitting in the big chair (so she actually does sit in it even when I’m not across her knee. Who knew?), and bullied her over so I could wedge myself between the arm and Mary.

“Why the long face?”

“You’re being too tall again,” I answered.

“Sorry,” she said with a verbal eye roll as she scooted herself down in the chair so her shoulder was just the right height for me to rest my head on. “Did you lose your game?”

“I quit part way.”

She closed her book, which made that satisfying book-closing sound (who doesn’t love that sound?), and asked me, “What happened?”

“This person was being mean to me.”

“What’d they say?”

“I don’t wanna repeat it.”

“Did they call you a name?”

“Yeah, but that’s not it.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t wanna say.”

“How am I supposed to help my Daffodil if you don’t tell me?”

Sheesh. She is so earnest sometimes. Can a person be earnestly earnest? Mary can, but she’s exceptional in all the ways. She’s also one of the all-time greats at seeming earnest when she’s being the very, very opposite, like when she’s telling me why I’m in trouble for doing non-troubling things or telling me little girls don’t call other gamers things like gravy salesman.

“They said something really ugly,” I said.

“You know it was probably just some stupid kid.”

“Yeah.”

“How about you just whisper it to me? It might make you feel better to say it, like you’re pushing it away.”

It was a very ugly thing to say. Who the hell is raising (or raised) these people? And it may not have been a kid; coulda been a grown ass adult, not that it even matters. I looked at Mary, and she was making her soft, you-can-too-tell-me-anything eyes. I’m a sucker for those eyes. And maybe there’s something to her pushing-it-away theory. I whispered it to her.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mary look so … frighteningly calm. She squeezed me tight, kissed my temple, and said, “I’ll be right back.” Like, huh what? She stood up and calmly left the room.

She’s not a big fan of video games. It’s like the six years between us puts us on opposite sides of the adults-who-game divide. She might not mind so much if I played casual games, but I like RPGs and FPSs. I didn’t play online multiplayer very much before I stopped working (what working adult has the time to play enough that they don’t get destroyed by middle schoolers who need more homework and less screen time?). I play a little more now.

Online gaming isn’t nearly as ugly as the media makes it out to be, but it does have its outsized share of oversized assholes. If Mary had her druthers (first time using that word – woohoo!), she’d take away all my games and replace them with My Little Pony Naps Quietly (Rated E for Everyone), Waiting for the Drier to Ding Simulator(Rated B for Boring People), and Your TV Isn’t Frozen It Only Looks that Way(Rated N for No One). Or she’d get rid of the whole console. It dawned on me that’s what Mary may have been doing so I went downstairs to put a stop to that if that’s what she was doing.

Instead, I found Mary wearing my headset. I’ll try my best to recreate what she said. (Sound of me clearing my throat for some reason before I type):

“Alright, you bleeping bleepers. What the bleep is your motherbleeping problem? Buncha bleeping bleepereses who couldn’t get bleeped in a bleephouse living bleep lives because bleep your bleeping cousin-bleeper parents bleeped their bleep in the bleeping puddle that is the  motherbleeping gene pool your bleeping ancestors spawned in. You wouldn’t be so bleeping brave if you weren’t sitting on your bleeps bleeping your bleep in your parents’ bleeping basements like sun-starved bleeped bleepers between your bleeping shifts scrubbing bleep off the bathroom walls at bleeping McDonald’s. If you bleeps EVER bleeping talk that way to my little girl again, I’ll bleeping find you, tie your bleeps to a bleep like it’s a bleeping hat and bleeping watch you bleep slow on your own bleep.”

“Mary,” tried to interject. It seemed interjecting was the wise thing to do; at least, I guessed it was but how would I know? I’m usually the unhinged one (in a much cuter and less this-could-be-the-cold-open-of-a-CSI-episode way), and of course even then I’m never unhinged because I’m the very poster picture of poise and equanimity. Really.

“ … and it bleeping won’t be in your motherbleeping sleep, motherbleepers…”

“Mary?”

“… with a bleeping hole where it used to bleeping be …”

“Mary?”

“ … until your bleep bleeps a bleep in bleeping bleep with the other bleeping bleepers …”

“Um, Mary?” Like, maybe it was a bad time for her to talk or something?

“ …your bleeping mothers will wear your bleep as a remembrance of the bleeping day they bleeped you out into your short, meaningless bleeping existence, you bleep bleepfaces …”

“M-Mary?”

“ … better bleeping dox your bleeping selves before I get there cuz you’ll bleeping need the bleeping Musketeers to come bleeping save your motherbleeping bleep before I bleep your …”

“Mar-Mary?”

“… bleeping like bleeping mistletoe hung with bleeping care at the last bleeping Christmas you’ll ever bleeping see …”

“A-ha-hem?”

“ … bleeping inside out! Do you bleeping read me, motherbleepers? Inside bleeping out!”

“H-hey, Mary?”

“Bleep!”

“Mary!?”

She closed her hand around the mic, turned to me like the world was totally normal and she wasn’t invoking ancient bane deities in our living room (free tip – always invoke ancient bane deities out of doors, or at least lay down some newspaper first), and said, “Yeah, sweetie, what’s up?” So … that was unsettling.

“It’s turned off.” She kinda did a double take like she was just then coming to grips with what a screensaver means. And yet, ladies and men (mostly men, buncha pervs), she has a big important job in technology somehow?

She sighed, took off my headset, and practically bounded across the room to throw her arms around me like an impatient anaconda.

“Um, are you alright?” No particular reason I asked, though I had very many questions about how far below the surface of her mind such vivid imagery resides and what medications will keep it there forevermore.

“I don’t like it when people are mean to you,” she said in a crying-a-little voice I recognized very well cuz it’s usually coming from me.

Not my fault. My feelings got hurt; Mary briefly became someone the great Beelzebub his self would tell to take it down a couple notches; and then she got teary. Mary getting teary is enough for me to get weepy. We both have a role to play, and I’ll be bleeped before she out-cries me. Not my bleeping fault I got weepy.

“Let it all out,” she said because she apparently thought my feelings were so much more wounded than they were. Mary was clearly way more upset about it than me. It’s a crappy part of gaming culture, and while it bothered me, it didn’t do to me whatever it did to Mary.

No, what got me going was the way the whole thing reminded me. “You really love me more than anything.”

“Of course I love you more than anything.” And she kissed my hair. Like, how can girl be expected to keep her knees from wobbling when her white knight violence goblin curses bleeping bleeps to bleeping bleep their bleep up both of their grandmothers’ bleeps and bleeps? (Okay; I made that one up, but the rest were all true.)

“You’re kinda terrifying.”

“I’ll keep you safe.”

Pretty sure she thought I was making room for a dramatic silence, but what really happened is my brain circuits blew and the brain manager had to do a hard restart.

Mary being Mary waited the appropriate three seconds before saying in nothing but seriousness, “If I ever hear you use those words, I’ll wash your mouth out and spank your bare tushy. Do you hear me, little girl?”

“Yes’m.” Far be it from me to respond less than submissively and respectfully to such a frightening personage. Frightening in a way that turns me on a little, if only in the context of verbally terrorizing a powered-off console on my behalf.

“Go get your shoesies.”

“Where are we going?”

“The cupcake store. My little girl deserves a treat just for being who she is.”

Remember in The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf gets really scary before making his kindly-old-basset-hound face and saying, ‘I’m trying to help you [you sweet widdle hobbity wobbit]’? That’s who I live with. That’s who married me cuz she loves me most out of all the things there are and I love her back just as much and twice over.

And the bleeps had better watch out cuz she’s a little unhinged when it comes to me, all to keep me safe (cuz she loves me). Sigh …

Also, I’m never telling her what other gamers say again cuz I like her so much that I don’t wanna risk a götterdämmerung harangue like that going viral in the distressing-to-think-about event the console is on next time. Mary is most enjoyable when she’s employed and not a defendant in any proceedings. True story.