Celebrating 3 Years Today

Exactly three years ago, Gllen lured me over to his house for, what he considered at the time, a date. We had been emailing each other about music and we got onto the topic of Nintendo. When Gllen found out that I still owned the original system plus a bunch of games, he freaked out (with joy). I proposed that we battle each other in a tournament. He accepted. Gllen told me in an email: "I warn you, I'm a competitive little fuck when it comes to games. Be prepared for some shit-talking and whining." This is how he tried to woo me.

Our tournament was dubbed by Gllen as The Inaugural NES and BBQ Skillz Nerd-Off. I have no idea why there is BBQ in there, except that Gllen was obsessed with saying it at the time. (It turned out to be quite fitting, since my sister and I used to sing "Bar-ba-que!" to the melody of the Bowser AirShip levels in Mario 3 - You had to jump over flames and stuff - try it yourself.) I even questioned him about it and, to explain, he showed me an example of how he converses with others:

Me: BBQ
Me: i can't count that high
Mike: LOLCHA
Me: rofl mayo
Mike: LOLWTFGOURMAYO
Me: moyostard
Mike: mayobutter
Me: mayo cha
Mike: mallorca
Mike: IBIZA 200 BPM

Again, this is how he tried to woo me.

When he started speaking in full sentences again, we both discovered that in our youth, each of us had played the Little Mermaid game. When I mentioned that I still had the game, he said, "Umm... is this the disney little mermaid? The one where you shoot bubbles at fishies (sega echo-ish)? I played and beat that game at my grandparents house ALL THE TIME! I can't believe you actually have that! I have mad little mermaid skillz. Seriously, you might want to leave that one at home, you have no chance." He even "designed" a t-shirt for the Winner based on his mermaid skillz:

I responded by showing him the Loser shirt which he would be wearing:

And so began the brilliant repartee between the two of us that still continues to this day.

In the end, there was no winner of the tournament, because Gllen disqualified himself by being an incessant button-masher. And even though I wasn't thinking it was a date at the time, if you look at the dictionary definition of Date, then I guess it was "A particular point or period of time at which something happened or existed, or is expected to happen." So this is the place we mark as "The Begining" of our relationship.

Happy Anniversary.