• I’m playing solitaire. It’s a lonely depressing sort of game, and I only play it when I’m in a lonely depressing sort of mood, funny. I hate it, haven’t played it for a while, always had more productive things to do.

    It reminds me of my language class. I took German III last year, and I always like to say “took” when speaking about it, because that’s all I ever did. I took the knowledge from the girl beside me and muddled my way through the class, and never really did any thing remotely prolific with my time.

    I played solitaire throughout my German experience. The teacher didn’t seem to mind. He’s young and relates far too easily with his class’s bellyaching, you could get away with anything, and I did, never lifted a finger. So, I became good at solitaire, not great but good; the computer will only let you cheat so much.

    You can mess up, I learned that. You can still win and mess up. Hell you can even win by sheer luck alone and I did, but luck is only a cover-up for ignorance, and as I continued playing skill replaced cheapskate chance.

    My games would get interrupted by lectures I never really heard. And my group members would give me a kind shove when I stopped paying attention to them; verbally or physically they made me look as though I was paying them heed.

    We were all copy machines, with hands instead of lasers. We duplicated whatever the smart one put down, she knew it, told us the actions we knew we were doing, but never really did anything about it. I think she liked it, it gave her a reason, put her on a pedestal. I just looked at her out of black-rimed eyes and shrugged; I’m great a shrugging, I’ve had a whole life’s worth of practice.

    It’s funny, I aced German III. I recall seeing my report card in total accepting shock, it’s not my grade, but it’s on my record. I can and will live with that. The computer says I won again.

    I watch as the cards bound across the screen, one pixilated leap at a time, unable too shake the feeling that I didn’t really accomplish anything. It’s a hallow victory.

    I play again.