Cyborg Awareness


I write this as today would have been the third consecutive Tuesday playing Ultimate Frisbee with some dudes. My leg, (and the weather) are not cooperating however. Injure yourself playing Frisbee you ask? Peer below at the newest picture. That was done last year. This year’s version is a lot more colorful but a little less painful. Lester Bangs would describe this as the “death rattle” of my athletic career.

I think when it is all said and done, however, the fondest memories I carry with me about sports won’t be from when I was an athlete. They wont be from the few times I had an opportunity to coach. And they sure as hell wont be from the summer that I umpired t-ball. No, my most fond memories will be of the conception of the most ingenious (trust me, Einstein would have thought so) game of all time. A game that’s legend has mini legends of their own. A game that should not even be called a “game” anymore, so it doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of standing beside “Candy Land” and “Hop Scotch” in the realm of the “game” genre. It should have an entire category of its own…one that transcends simple labels, and wanders into the category of “a way of life”, much like surfing, golf, and the original NBA Jam did years before it.

This is the tale of that phenomenon, and why it must be destroyed.

The true story of Cyborg Awareness

I want to state right off the bat that Cyborg Awareness is the genesis of multiple minds. It would be scientifically impossible for one person to come up with something so…unique. I am writing this from my perspective. If it helps you to compare it to the way the New Testament was written, then so be it, but I don’t think that’s right. If however, you did choose to go down that route, think of me as Luke…whom I’ve always liked. Anyway, my friends John and Kyle, whom everybody should be familiar with, are my fellow evangelists. You’ll have to read their blogs for their take on the matter (Johns Blog, Kyles Blog).

We begin in the early 90’s, because as is the case with most any creative process, legend creating is truly a system of trial and error. Like all Richmondites would tell you, life was boring. All we could do was create ways to pass the time quickly. We were only armed with what raw materials we could find around the house, and an imagination that would make a boar with a tack up his ass look tame. I’m pretty sure we all had ADD, but (now I’m dating myself) Ritalin wasn’t yet available in vending machines. Our method of exercising the demons was less scientific than popping a pill…it was essentially coming up with the strangest, most completely insane games ever thought of, and becoming masters of them.

In the early days, our games were simply just variations of already existing popular sports, but tailored to meet our requirements. Regular baseball became “Backyard Baseball” in which me, and my friend David were the only participants. It was extremely successful through an elaborate system of ghost men and self-umpiring, and was always followed by an actual video taped highlight reel of how the game went… as we remembered it. When we finally got tired of only playing against each other, we modified the game so we could be on the same team. This was called “Umpiring Baseball”. One of us was the pitcher, and the other was the catcher. It was up to the catcher to call balls and strikes and also to decide when the “other team” got a hit. When we deemed a pitch hit worthy, we threw the ball as far as we could, in accordance to where someone would likely hit a pitch in that location, of course, and then give the play by play of where the “runner” was. “He’s rounding third going for home…” was usually how the play ended. We would then tag the runner out, unless we dropped the ball, and then it usually worked out that the opposing player had missed home plate, or had too much pine tar on his bat.

Other games came and went, and are too numerous to name. But I am sure everybody reading this knows where I am coming from. This is something that is done by every kid across the world. These games are stupid little ways to get through childhood. One day in the depths of my basement, it became more than that. We came up with our Mona Lisa.
The premise of Cyborg Awareness is quite simple. However, as I will get into later, if you are missing any of the main ingredients you threaten the integrity of the game. This is what is NEEDED.
· Three players
· A Dark Basement
· Van Halen’s “Right Now” as performed in “Live: Right Here, Right Now”

That’s it. Here’s what happens:
Player 1 goes upstairs while player players 2 and 3 rearrange the furniture in the basement. Completely rearrange. Generally this segment usually takes about 10 minutes. The lights are then turned completely off and any light that may somehow get into the basement must be immediately killed. This may mean moving some bobbleheads and covering the window with some pillows. Then player 2 or 3 starts the song “Right Now”. This is the cue for player 1 to enter the playing arena. With player 1 completely unaware of his surroundings, he must fine-tune his available senses, much like a Cyborg would. While player 1 is wandering aimlessly around, player 2 and 3, who are already acclimated to the new contour of the room, glide around the room snorting like a pig, essentially throwing off any sense of player 1’s reality. The game ends when the song ends. Then you rotate. There is no winner or loser…that would be too much like a conventional game.

We played it for a while…and had a blast. The fun however, was short-lived. We had to stop playing the first time because John, as one of the “Cyborg Hunting Hogs”, had positioned himself on a countertop beneath an overhanging cabinet and really did a number on his back during one of his snorts. After that I’m pretty sure the CD was somehow scratched, and “Right Now” was never the same. Once that happened we had no choice but to retire. We were 12 years old…it was time to move onto less exiting things in our lives.

So, our story hits the triangle button and fast-forwards 6 years. It’s my senior year in high school, I am 18 years old, and I’m eating in the cafeteria. There are about eight or so casual acquaintances of mine sitting around the table, passing around the conversation. The topic: what our plans are for the upcoming weekend. After a few people share theirs, the eyes all turn to the fellow sitting across from me, (I will spare his true identity, we will just call him “Robert Abner”) for it is his turn. Robert is someone whom I’ve known throughout high school, but never had the opportunity to hang out with “on the outside”, so I was genuinely curious.

“Well, not sure really,” Abner said casually. “My friends and I will probably end up doing what we always do…play Cyborg Awareness.”

I sat, completely dumbstruck.

“What did you say?” I asked, with the tone of someone who had just been told the year was 1955 by his teenage mother. You see, Cyborg Awareness was not something I had ever talked about, none of us had, at least amongst each other. I hadn’t heard those two words together since I was 12 (we used the word ‘Cyborg’ actually quite frequently). Hearing it now brought back everything…and I was starting to freak out.

“Yea, its just this weird game we’ve been playing for a while…” Abner said. Everybody else just kind of nodded.

“Oh really? That’s quite interesting. I see. Hmm. Well, who invented this game?”

“I don’t know, who knows? I mean…who invented freeze tag?”
My fists clench…but I continue with the rapid fire. “And how do you play this game?”

And he described it to me. Just about all of it was Cyborg Awareness as I knew it. He wrapped it up by saying “Yea, and the whole time we blast music.”

“What song?”

“Doesn’t really matter…just something pretty heavy.”

That put me over the edge. “NO YOU FOOL! Its ‘Right Now!’ You don’t know anything about Cyborg Awareness and you don’t have my permission to play!”

Everybody at the table is now staring at me. I catch my breath and regroup my thoughts

Three things completely took me by surprise:
1. Somebody had heard of Cyborg Awareness
2. Somebody other than us actually enjoyed playing Cyborg Awareness (even if they did it wrong)
3. They had no idea that Kyle, John, and I invented this game.

To make a long story short (too late!), I think we determined that Kyle leaked the rules sometime during the 6 years and it had caught on under our noses. I do not know the current state of Cyborg Awareness. I have run into Abner several times since the incident, and am always assured that the correct music is being played, wherever it is that Cyborg Awareness is still being played. This pleases me.

And now you know…the rest of the story.