The Sandlot

So Saturday a bunch of us had off work. Brett, rugger, tos and myself all made a journey up to the galleria. Brett wanted to go up there to go to the nerd store. I forget what its called but its located in the food court area and its got all the warhammer and other role play nerd game shit in it. We walk in, there's some dirty looking nerd hand painting some tiny little plastic figurines over in the corner. There's a few other nerds in there looking around and chatting with one of the employees/owner/manager/guy seemingly in charge. Soon as we walk in they all pretty much stop what they were doing and stare at us for a minute. Apparently its not everyday 4 fine looking strapping men come waltzing into their little realm of fiction. So we're making our rounds and the guy asks if we need help with anything. Which brings me to the point of why did we make a special trip just to go to this store.

Let me first take you back to about 2-3 weeks ago. Erik made a discovery that he still had the board game Heroquest. He began asking around if any of us had ever played it. Point in fact, we all had played it at some point in our pasts. I even have the game as well. So me Erik and rugger went over to bretts one Saturday and played. Playing Heroquest reminded BF of this other similar game he used to have/play called Mutant Chronicles. Apparently it was more or less the same principle as Heroquest but instead of wizards, elves, dwarfs and barbarians fighting orcs, goblins and things of that nature, this game featured genetically enhanced space marines dishing out justice. In the next few days there was countless bids on eBay auctions attempting to obtain a rare copy of the game. Like Heroquest, Mutant chronicles is one of those out of print 1990's board games.

So Brett tells the guy he's looking for these old school games. He seems amused and I think a bit shocked to discover our purpose. Unfortunately they don't have the stuff but if we have the time there's a shop about 10 minutes down the road on Walden Ave in Lancaster called Jester's Cap (or something like that) that might have some of it and if they don't they might be able to locate it for us. We thank him and leave. The rest of our galleria trip was uneventful. Bf bought a huge Army of Darkness poster and we saw a lot of sketchy and stupid looking people.

So we head off for nerd store number 2. Drive right by it thinking it would be in some sort of plaza and not a stand alone recessed building. This place is actually like 3 shops all combined into 1. In the center is the main store. We go in, there's warhammer stuff all over like the other store. They also have a ton of other shit. Some older stuff as well but nothing we wanted we could see. Brett talks to the guy behind the counter, some confederate army sympathizer dude in a cut-off shirt. He says they might have some shit in the other room. So we go over there and tucked in the corner is like 4 dudes at a table playing I think Magic: the Gathering. Again we get the stare down from these nerds. We snoop around a bit, don't find anything again. Me n tos cant take it anymore so we go sit in the truck. We see nerds go into the far right portion of the building which is just a room with tables and chairs. They too, start playing Magic.

Its ridiculous. I haven't been around nerd culture in a couple years and it again fascinated and scared me. The whole shop smelled like nerd. Makes me glad I didn't turn down that path in my youth too much. Sure I played Dungeons and Dragons with some of my friends but we certainly were not nerds. Its kind of funny, that we're are in our twenties and we're regressing back to our nerds days. Whatever though. BF won the auction and we should have Mutant Chronicles by the weekend; at which time we shall engage in bloody fisticuffs on the high planes of space.