Page 11 of Dance with Me on New Year's Eve
CastGamer55:Would you design it?
SawyerRox4:Uh, what? ME?
CastGamer55:Yes.
SawyerRox4:Well, I don’t know the first thing about developing a game.
CastGamer55:You could learn.
SawyerRox4:I suppose … maybe. Why don’t you design a game like that? It is your idea. And a great one.
CastGamer55:I’d like to.
SawyerRox4:Oh, do you mean
I stopped typing but didn’t press Send. Was he hoping I would design a board game with him? Seriously? That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t mean that. Could he? But before I could finish my message, he sent another.
CastGamer55:I was thinking we could work together.
CastGamer55:If you’re not interested, that’s fine.
SawyerRox4:No, yeah, I might be. I just need a moment. It’s just a surprise, that’s all.
CastGamer55:Have you heard of Game Acres?
SawyerRox4:No, is that a gamer site?
CastGamer55:It’s a community of game designers. Game Acres sounds like Game Makers, right?
SawyerRox4:Oh, neat. You’re part of the community?
CastGamer55:I just joined fairly recently.
SawyerRox4:That sounds interesting
CastGamer55:It’s open to all experience levels, even complete novices.
SawyerRox4:It sounds great
CastGamer55:So you’ll join?
My breath caught in my throat. He was asking me to create a game with him and join this game developer group? We knew virtually nothing about each other than our opinions about the show.
And yet, as my heart raced, I realized it was excitement, not fear. Not nerves. Well, maybe some nerves.
I wanted to say yes.
I could admit life had become stale lately. I’d known deep down for a while that I needed something new, something to stimulate my mind and my creativity … maybe even friendship. Butthis…
This could be both. I could connect with another personanddo something intellectually stimulating.
Would it be ludicrous to say yes? He wasn’t asking to meet up in person. I didn’t even know where on earth he lived. It was just a different form of online interaction, channeled into something more creative. More fun. More … everything.
I had every reason to say yes.
CastGamer55:You still there?
But also every reason to say no. Because I wasn’t a person who just tried new things and chased excitement. Just the opposite, in fact. Sure, maybe I was kind of a different person on the internet … not in a deceitful way, but without the extreme shyness, I could be myself more. But I wasn’tsodifferent that I’d easily jump into something big and different with a near stranger.
