StrangerThanFriction::Blog

This past weekend was a real trip to the past for me. About twelve years ago I found myself adrift - I was gong to college, but with only a very vague idea of what I wanted to do, and my living arrangement was strained at best. My father had accepted a very compelling job offer just as I was wrapping up high school and, being the ridiculously independent type, I’d decided to stay in LA. Even working full time and getting some support from my parents, I was chronically strapped for cash, living in the middle of nowhere because it was cheap and more or less floundering around for a sense of direction.

Through a college friend, Zorah, I managed to land my very first tech job, which was as a QA analyst for a gaming company. If that sounds in any way like a “cool job” the reader is advised to try it. Even good games are painful when you play them 40 hours a week, and we didn’t make particularly good games. But, the bright point was that I met some really good people, including a fellow tester named Bryan, a progammer named Zak and a very prim and proper exhibitionist who was my immediate boss. The black walls, exposed ceiling and hanging rice lanterns combined with ongoing Nerf wars and the recent release of Quake made the drugery of testing feel rather worth it.

Scanning forward a bit, Zorah was in the SCA - the Society for Creative Anachronism (geeks with swords and bad accents, if you prefer) - and she was also very cute. As a result, a lot of us ended up going with her to one event or another and falling in love with the society. Yes, it’s horribly nerdy. But, there is something really compelling about being out in the high desert at night, bonfires blazing, drummers hammering out a complex rythm while dancers move in the firelight and the day’s battles are recounted loudly over tankards of mead and ale. It’s a source of many great stories, and while I ultimately moved on I still think back on those events fondly.

Part of the reason for this, and the main point of the post is the people. It was at these wars, tourneys and practices that I met the group of people who would ultimately form Jabir. Jabir was something unique, as anyone who shared those days will attest. It was an uncanny blending of the right people at the right place at the right time. Most pedantically, Jabir was a house - a house that was to be inabbited by a few people who were fed up with their living arrangements and venting at a local fighter practice. In the end, there were five of us and a run-down 1960’s two story in the north San Fernando Valley which had apparently withstood the Northridge quake on luck alone.

Jabir the entity was a lot more than a simple rooming arrangement, though. There was a strong synergistic effect among us, and we spend an amazing number of nights that first year just hanging out and talking. We were also a rambunctious and creative lot. One night, we decided to have a Star Wars-themed party, so we dismantled the ten-foot satelite dish in the back yard, dug a hole in the yard and planted the dish so we had our own little death star. Somehow we got distracted, though, and never bothered with the party. We would shoot darts in the kitchen, angling our shots through an open door and (reasonably often) hitting board in the garage. When we ran out of darts, we used bolt cutters. When that got boring we’d strap people to roller chairs, armor them up with a steel helm and make them do battle. We decorated with severed doll limbs and cutout Leonardo DiCaprio heads. Our Christmas tree was the first large branch of the season to be ripped off a tree by wind, and we decorated it with chains, latex gloves, soda cans and suppositories. We dumped a hundred pounds of dry ice in the pool and then made Bryan swim across for his Logan’s Run-themed 30th birthday. We set a *lot* of things on fire, including one of the roommates. The local pizza shop owner was convinced the house was owned by a eccentric and preternaturally hungry doctor and the delivery guy simply got used to seeing medieval weapons, naked women and plumes of smoke when they showed up. They were the only people other than the Jehovah’s witnesses who ever, ever rang the doorbell - everyone else knew to just walk in.

Jabir was a fairly long-lived phenomenon. We threw some epic parties, had ongoing amusing bouts of drama and generally lived it up in true fraternity fashion for a good five years. After that, people started moving on - buying houses of their own, developing their careers, getting into serious relationships and the like. And, like all good things, it eventually drifted off.

Some of us kept in touch with some regularity, or continued to room together after the house of Jabir was sold and razed. Others I’ve lost touch with over the years.

Just last week, I reconnected with Bryan, who had filled the role of an elder brother to me through college. We hadn’t really talked in three or four years - he’s since bought a house, married a girl he’d met at Jabir back in the day and generally done very well. It just happened that this past weekend they were having a party and a few of the staple crew from those days was going to be there. Naturally, I went and had a fantastic time catching up with some of the people who were such fixtures of those crazy years. It really brought back a lot of the memories, and for a while that sense of fraternity came back as well.

It’s strange to write all this, as most of the people who are likely to read it either were part of that time and understand completely, or weren’t and probably won’t get a sense of it from my rambling descriptions. I guess that’s not really the point, anyway. If we’d had cheap video cameras back then it might have made for a good movie, but as it is I think Jabir will eternally live in the had-to-be-there files. But, nostalgia aside, it is remarkably satisfying to reconnect with people who shared those experiences. Life moves fast, and it seems like we often don’t have the time to keep up with people. If there’s any point to this whole wandering diatribe it’s this: Make time. People matter a lot more than the trivialities that rush us through our days. If you’ve lost track of important people, make time to find them. You’ll be glad you did.