Six Years Later

The week before Valentine's Day in 2005, my best friend and I came out of "hiding".

Since the Fall of 1999, I'd played online video games with a group I met on Ultima Online. We made an annual trip to Vegas each June to see each other and catch up on real life, but spent the rest of our time playing games online and chatting through headsets and voice programs on our computers.

From Ultima Online, our group moved on to Star Wars Galaxies just after it launched. We are seriously a dorky group, and had a blast playing through it.

Then in late 2004, Blizzard Entertainment launched World of Warcraft. And things changed for a little bit.

Part of the group jumped to the new game, playing with us on SWG still, but raving about this new setting. My best friend picked up the game, and loved it as well, but didn't publicly say anything about making the jump.

In mid January of 2005, I bought a copy and installed it. I tried a character, loved the beauty of the game, and told my best friend about this. She and I soon had picked a server to play on together, and were excited to adventure and be able to talk about it.

February came around, and somehow the others learned we were playing. I'm not sure how we ended up on the server we were on, but we did, all of use who currently had the game, and it was a good feeling to have them all there.

Then the next logical step came about: forming a guild for our group.

WoW requires a guild charter to be purchased, and I think it's 10 "signatures" are needed to actually create the guild. We only had seven, so the spamming of requests to find strangers willing to help us by adding their name just so we could get started began.

The missing three were found, our guild created, and then the chatting with these new people began. One dropped almost immediately, knowing he was just there for the creating, and not saying much to us. Another stayed for a bit to chat, but once he logged out was quickly ejected from the guild.

That last one stayed on for the rest of the night. He had our sense of humor, quickly caught on to our joking and flirting, and the next thing I knew there was talking of offering a gold piece for a lap dance. I still remember laughing and sending private messages to my best friend about all this.

When he left for the night because it was late for him on the East Coast, we chatted and agreed to leave him in the group.

His character and mine became inseparable. We quested and leveled together nightly, a few days later were chatting on AIM, then a month later spending hours together on the phone.

Three months after that night, he visited me on the other side of the US and spent 10 days with me. We talked and laughed and played games together. His going home was a rough time at the airport, but after that trip we talked even more. He referred to my apartment as home, and missed me and the people he had met on the other side of the country.

After losing his job in July, and not having luck finding anything, a trip back out to visit was suggested. Neither of us had the money, and out of the blue my mom offered to fly him out as my Christmas present from her.

He missed his flight home two weeks after arriving, and we haven't been apart since then.

Six years later, we are married and expecting a son. I love him more now than I did then.

So to my husband, thank you for the last six years and for taking a chance on CA and me.

And mom, thanks for the best Christmas present ever!!!