Smash

Camaraderie is often associated with a common interest, something that binds two friends together that isn't necessarily essential to there friendship, but often the primer. Surprisingly, something as mundane as video games can be that common interest. In high school, I hung out with a wide variety of people, we had intellectual conversations, did interesting things together, etc. When I came to BYU I socially regressed drastically. All I did was hang out with a bunch of dudes and play video games, I rarely left campus:not exactly a recipe for social fulfillment. But, we got tired of video games (eventually), started to talk, got to be friends, and we can't get rid of each other to this very day. I live with some of these friends now, and needless to say our relationship has deepened considerably since our Halo matches, but when we gather in numbers the venue is rarely in question. It way the same way last winter semester with my roommates, Keith and Adam. Adam loves sports with a passion, I don't; common ground didn't exactly just sprout up. Keith is a masters student in English literature and rather reserved; we tried talking philosophy, music, literature and politics, but succeeded only in having good conversations. When I discovered Keith owned a Gamecube and a Wii, suddenly things changed. Suddenly we four (Mike, a roommate at the time, my MTC companion formerly, and a good friend currently, was the fourth) had a common interest, Super Smash Brothers (first Melee, then Brawl), a way to pit our egos against each other and oh, what chaos ensued! Friendly competition and a love of the game proved effective catalysts in our friendship, speeding up a process that might not have happened before we all moved out. To this day I still talk about books with Keith, life in general with Adam and we're still friends (though we don't see each other too often), but last Saturday we got together and Smashed, and it was awesome. So here's to you video game makers of the world, may we never grow to old to play!