We admins/mods have been lying to you all along.

[Jasper]

You fuckers are crazier than I thought.  And I already thought you were goddamned barking.

[Jenne]

You fuckers are crazier than I thought.  And I already thought you were goddamned barking.

...Woof?

[Richter]

 Shit, thanks  
Had to edit that a lot.  It started last night to Tom Waits and vodka after I was done staring at my state returns.  

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You fuckers are crazier than I thought.  And I already thought you were goddamned barking.

...Woof?

"Barking" = mad as a hatter.

[Jenne]

Richter, the early years, when he just let go of the spincter...

You'll note that he isn't talking about The Incident.  It was a fucking mess, and it was all the school board could do to keep it out of the papers.  Today, of course, he'd have been booked on terrorist charges and taken away...The "Final Solution" Pog was utterly uncalled for, and yet another reason we can't have nice things.

...what he's forgotten is that he's actually part of those god-damned government experiments.  You know the ones.  But they gave him something to forget, and now all he has are those false memories, the same they give those kids whose faces reside on the backs of those milk cartons.  Richter was Specimen X287.  He was to be given The Treament^TM and sent out into the wild.

But they didn't know that the power of pogs would actually create superhuman efforts to subvert the experiment's plans.  No, instead, Richter broke out of character and cared more for his hide than his latest stash he could slam all day, forgetting about sleep, food and sex.

In fact, he learned how to Black Market that shit on the streets.  Ever hear of Voodoo Pog Gaming?  Yeah, that was Richter.  See, he figured out that kids just wanted to stay out late at night, slamming Pogs till the dawn came, and didn't give a damn who they lied to, who they stole from or who they bamboozled into getting them some game.  Voodoo was the latest craze of the mid-90's, and Richter invented it so kids could pull the wool over their parents' and grannies' eyes.

Little Jimmy had his parents thinking he was going to Wednesday night Bible Study...in reality, he was on the dark side, playing Voodoo Pog down the road with Richter.  The fact that this game master looked and smelled like a preacher's wet dream of a camp counselor worked to his benefit.

Oh yeah, those were the hey days of Pogging the Big City, alright.

Those government fucks have a lot to answer for--so much wasted youth, so much wasted time.

[Jenne]

You fuckers are crazier than I thought.  And I already thought you were goddamned barking.

...Woof?

"Barking" = mad as a hatter.

I know, I was speaking the lingo...

[Jasper]

 

[navkat]

After a while things changed.  A lot of people grew out of pogs, I've heard.  A lot of others just grew bored with them, forgot them once the craze died down.  Heh, I envy the innocent.  Our change didn't come from time.  It came from the guy with the razor slammers.

Our little regular group stopped getting together.  Not just for pogs, either, really entirely.  Couldn't even meet one another's gaze in the schoolyard.  Mikey was the first to go, now that I think about it.  He didn't show up to do pogs one day, and this is when we just did it because it's what we did, not out of any sense of sport or fun.  Anyway Mikey was at home.  His mom gave me the whole "can't come out to play" routine but I knew what was up.  I walked around the back and looked into his window.  It looked like he was trying to clean his room or something, but every time he came upon something disc shaped, he stopped and stared for a minute, then calmly put it down and tried to move onto something else.  Coins, soda caps, at one point he was all fucked up by the little paper rounds left by hole punches.  He turned out okay in the long run, I hear, some kind of doctor.  I was happy to hear that.

Danny is one of those guys that shapes the events in a positive light.  He's an advocate now, got himself a social work degree and everything, and he specializes in cases like ours.  When I ran into him at the supermarket the other week and found this out, he was holding a box of Ritz crackers.  I was walking by and he became suddenly very interested in the nutrition label.  Didn't say a goddamn word.

Eric.  Shit, Eric was the star of the show back then.  He had this flick of the wrist that would send your pogs flying.  Thing of beauty, it was, real talented kid.  We were glad to have him around, but I think we all knew he wasn't going to be in our little group for long with the kind of ability he had.  He turned out the worst.  Had the hardest to fall, I guess.  I never had the nerve to see him again but the stories tell themselves.  Turned into what he hated.  Went from game to game, sniffing them out on the wind like prey, toting some kind of homemade slammer he'd been working on.  Just mutilated the pogs from that point onward, his considerable skill gone totally awry.  I wonder if he ever got out of it.

Me, I'm done, you know, moved on.  Still have my moments, of course, like anybody.  I'll be rummaging through the old junk drawer and a little metal disk will slip into my hand, the weight still familiar after all these years.  Danny and Mikey and Eric flood back into vision, just some kids with a hobby.  Gotta drop that thing shortly after, shut that drawer up tight.

Hell of a fucking thing though, pogs.

?

[Jasper]

There has been a good number of posts today that I won't soon forget.  Hard to say which is best.  And it's early still.

[Luna]

There has been a good number of posts today that I won't soon forget.  Hard to say which is best.  And it's early still.

Can't decide if I'm in awe, intimidated as fuck, or both.

[LMNO]

When it happens, you just gotta grab hold and ride it. 

[Luna]

When it happens, you just gotta grab hold and ride it. 

Excellent multi-purpose advice, that.

[Jenne]

When it happens, you just gotta grab hold and ride it. 

Yes, PD's sorta the "mechanical bull" of the interbutts when this feeling comes over us.  But we get the Spider stories, the Highway stories and the Letters of Strange out of it, so it's totally awesome when it does.

[Eater of Clowns]

You know, I got all worked up when pogs came up.  I tend to sometimes.  Fly off the handle a bit when such a big thing is talked about so casually.  I can see Richter had his demons, too, and I respect the pog dialogues for helping me out with my shit.    Come to terms with it, I have, for the most part, ever since the first tidal wave of the memories rushed at me.

It was two years ago.  I was new here, working at the jail.  I guess I'm still new, when I'm in a room full of twenty year guys who still have a while to go.  Anyway, they bring the new hires on a tour of the facility as part of the orientation.  Brought me through the high security wing, and even the other jail we operate, old ass facility where you can still see the trap doors and worn beams they used to use for hangings.

The inmates get their kicks out of trying to scare newcomers.  Got paraded through the segregation wing in a little group, all office staff like myself eyes wide and movements stiff.  They love that shit, eat it up, it's entertainment.  So we're getting our little view and they're all banging on the doors and yelling.  Except for one guy.  He was just standing there.  Thought it was weird, shrugged it off, turned to leave.

Then I caught his eyes.  Felt like I'd been shot.  Or, given whose eyes they were, struck by lightning.  The storm didn't rise outside like it used to when we were kids, but there was a fuck of a tempest turning up in my stomach.  Fought it down while I got pelted like hail with words like GAME - SLAMMER - ERIC - METAL - FLIP - MIKE - WIN - PLAYGROUND - POG - DANNY - MAY - STORM - POG - POG - POG.  POG.  POG.

I left there a wreck.  Looked him up later in our system, turns out he's just a local, probably drinks at some dive bar.  Got picked up for destruction of property, was serving good time but for that stint in seg for a fight he didn't even start.  Fuck, he might've just been a victim, like Eric.  Gotta wonder where the whole cycle started, how many poor fucks got turned around in a fate so much bigger than just our own.

After that, after seeing who he was.  I felt alright.  Even in the years between the incidents when I'd go without thinking of pogs for a log time, I never felt so at peace.  Comes up now and again, still hurts, but I'm good.  I'm good.