Entry d9: A Coffee Cup of Anger

    Ah Dungeons and Dragons, what can I say; at times its like arriving home after being caught in a cold shower on the long walk home, while at other times it can be more like finding that your stuck in that very same rain storm, and you have been locked out of your car. By this I mean that it is great when your among others who play D&D, as they are welcoming and excepting... and know what your talking about when you say armor class or divine caster class. But sadly the world is populated by more then just the people of this first group. Sadly there are those that see D&D as something to be shunned, hated, and made fun of... and with the game, those who play it.

    As a player and fan of Dungeons and Dragons I know that there are people out there in the world who view my hobby as anything from weird and nerdy, all the way to evil and dangerous. I know all the stereotypes that have been placed upon my hobby, all the negative rumors that float around us like pestilence, and when I really thought about it I can only ever really remember one time when someone gave me and my group of friends a hard time for what we liked:

    My group used to play every Saturday afternoon, and we constantly switched up the environments in which we played. We'll I am a huge fan of coffee and seeing a clever idea as to how I could combine my two loves I thought of the excellent idea of taking my D&D group to the coffee shop Hazels here in Saint Joseph. Well thinks went smoothly for about an hour or two until just as we were packing up as a rather nasty storm had blown in, the manager/owner of the shop came in and saw us there in the corner. She kinda asked us what we were doing and we explained that it was the role playing game Dungeons and Dragons... I figured this meeting would go similar to many in the past, as I had been asked questions by curious people before, but this woman as soon as she heard us say the words "Dungeons and Dragons" the smile vanished off her face. I will always remember the next words that came out of her mouth:

    "You mean that game where people kill themselves?"

    She went on to say that just like so many others she knew a woman who's sister's son killed himself after playing the game and then went on to ask if we were going to bring weapons into her establishment. I was furious but managed to calmly tell her the only way some would die from this game was from laughing to hard.

    That experience left a very sour taste in my mouth for many months, in fact for a while I refused to go back to that shop because who knows I might bring a weapon in! I got over it tho and in fact today I stop to have a mocha with my friends all the time, but I'll never forget that moment when the ghosts of the past came back to haunt us.