Ok, here we go... you asked for it!!
It all started some eight years ago, when I entered third grade and got into this "accelerated learning" class. There I met a strange boy who seemed to have some social problems. He was ridiculed by the entire class (and occasionally some teachers), and the fact that he couldn't keep his temper and would cry over little things made it all worse. I wasn't really different – I was just as hot-tempered as he was, and some of my early posts on the forum reflect that, as some of you were unfortunate enough to see. I couldn't exactly identify his problem (I still don't know what it is, and I'm not interested in asking), but I could clearly see that he had little social skills and an extraordinarily high IQ. When I could, I would often support him, and sometimes publicly defend him, when the rest of the class made fun of him.
Teachers, you know, they just
have to give us group projects. Don't know what made him do that, but one of the times we had a group project he decided to do it with me. This initiated the friendship between us, but we were still little more than acquaintances.
Came the day when I saw WSW on ArcadeTown. The graphics were cute and appealing to our eyes, and the game required quite a bit of thinking. This, I thought, is the game for him. I told him about the game and invited him over to play, and my thoughts were correct: the game really did fit him perfectly. A few weeks later, just before I was about to buy it, he phoned me and told me about a better game: Return to Wonderland. Let's just say, after I bought the game we would meet up every week and play for hours. We were true friends at that point – and not many could be seen as his "true friends".
Except for second grade, I was popular wherever I went. And when popular X befriends outcast Y, Y's rank rises until he eventually surpasses X in popularity. His rank started rising rapidly. He joined the others in their card games, which they still play regularly to this day. All of a sudden he was talking to more people, and he quickly gained friends of his own. Wonderland played a major role in creating the friendship between us, which in turn made him gain the friends he has now.
...Does that count?
