I was 14 when I started at Colton Jr. High School in Colton, California. Beginning in the middle of the year probably wasn’t the best start in school for me, but that’s hot it was in my life--going from one school to another. I was a quiet kid, so I didn’t make friends very easily, except for one kid; buy the name of James, my main friend at the time. A few months into the year, I became bored with my spare time at school and my only outlet to curve this feeling was videogames. I had heard that there were computers in the library. So, I decided to go take a look one day. When Colton Jr. High was built, the seven buildings were laid out in rows to form a square and resembled a large courtyard with sidewalks wrapping around each building. There were ten classes to one structure and each row was dedicated to a particular class of study: English, Math, the Sciences, and the electives building, housing classes such as Home Economics, Ceramics, etc., with the library built off the end of the wing. The size of the library was small relative to the number of students that attended the school; the student body alone was approximately fifty-five hundred kids. The front door to the building was on the same walkway as the elective classes. When I stood in the library’s door and looked out, I saw to the left of me the backside of the last building. Straight ahead on the first building were the main school offices and slightly to the right of that, the auditorium. In the middle and off to the right around the auditorium was the playground, and directly behind me was the library. As I turned around, and walked into the library, the smell of old books that had been sitting to long on their shelves, hit my nose, like a basement full of mol. As I advanced, a feeling of claustrophobia overwhelmed me in the narrow opening I had entered. Moving along the small opening, I saw to my immediate left a small lab consisting of only 6 very outdated computers. Directly on my right was the office and further right was the front desk to check the books out. There was an area in the middle of the room with long, oak tables where students could sit and study, and surrounding that on the three outer walls were sets of bookshelves about ten feet long each. There were at least twenty of them altogether. At first, I went inside to curve my curiosity; I was heavy into playing videogames on the Super Nintendo System at the time, so when I had heard there was a library and that it had computers, I had to check it out. I went up to the front desk to speak to who I thought was the librarian at the time. When WHACK! “Work, you slow piece of junk!” That was the sound I heard coming from the office, so I asked the lady behind the counter, “Who is that?” “Oh, that’s Dr. Morill, the head of our library department.” I thought to myself, “Kind of strange that a grown man is hitting, like, one of the newest computers on the market.” I felt compelled to go and ask him why he was doing that to his new Mac Lc II. In the office to the right, he was sitting at his computer, waiting for something to load on the screen, and then quite suddenly, he screamed at the poor machine, “Hurry up! You’re slow!” Dr. Morill was a middle aged man in his 50s, but he looked like he could have been older; he had salt-and-pepper hair with a full beard to match and he wore black, thick-rimmed glasses. I know he must have been a proud man; when I walked into his office, it was decorated with all of his various achievements throughout his lifetime. He even had his graduation robes from his doctorate in philosophy hanging in a case for all to see. From that moment, I noticed the Dungeon and Dragons book next to his computer it didn’t take long for me to realize that he was not only intelligent and had a lot of good things to offer, but that he was also an avid DnD fan. For weeks, we talked about a great deal of things every day during lunchtime, with him always saying “see you tomorrow at the end of lunch.” To this day, I’m still not sure what sparked his interest in me with the game of Dungeons and Dragons. During our lunchtime talks, he offered himself as a Dungeon Master and asked if I wanted to make and play a character in a game that he made himself. I quickly answered, “Yes!” and he said, “Well, then, in order to play, you gotta make a character, and to do that, you need to read the Player’s handbook.” He handed me the 1st Edition Player’s Handbook of Dungeons and Dragons to read. It’s the tool used from making all characters in a D&D game. In a couple of weeks, I read through the book and even sparked James’ interest enough from him to make a character and have the enthusiasm to play the game. As soon as we were done creating our characters, I let Dr. Morill know and within days, we were playing games in the library during lunchtime. At first, it was just James and I playing the game. I had no idea at the time, but I guess we were drawing more attention than I had thought. Someone was always watching us; I had seen the nerdy book worm boy hanging around the library before, reading books and playing on the computer. A week or so after we started to play, I noticed that the boy’s routine changed from books and going to the computer lab to sitting and watching us play D&D. He was even asking the doctor about the game, so instead of answering all the geeky questions, he gave the boy the same offer that he had given James and I, with one exception. He wasn’t allowed to leave the library with the Player’s Handbook and before the doctor could get the book in his hand, I asked the boy his name and he replied, “Hector Torrez.” He quickly read through the book to make a character and before I knew it, he was playing the game with us. Hector was a bit more popular than most kids. He was a preppy kid, but with geeky friends, so when he started to play, his friends followed. At first, he brought Gilbert and Gabe, then Gilbert brought Vincent, and Vincent brought Nicky to the game of Dungeons and Dragons. This all happened within a couple weeks of James and I first starting our daily game sessions in the library, characters on paper, pencils in hand, dice ready to go and Dr. Morril narrating our games. For the next one-and-a-half years, we played D&D at lunchtime with the doctor. Sadly, when we had to move to the high school, Dr. Morill no longer was our Dungeon Master. He was only part of the junior high school, after all. Luckily, Hector took over the role of DM and the seven of us continued to play D&D through our lunchtimes out on the quad at the high school. Gradually, the games started dwindling and we stopped showing up to play on the quad altogether. Though we grew apart from each other, the games were fun nonetheless and taught me what I needed to know so I could move onto other D&D games, one of which I still play with a few of my friends every once in a while.
