Hey folks!
It's been quite awhile, and I do apologize for the lack of communication. I've been quite busy with work and a lot of stuff in my life, but I wanted to take some time and get back into writing, one of my secret loves.
I get the same question quite often when I play online games, give people my e-mail address, or when people started reading my blog: "What's with the name Spiffer?" For me, good folks, it's a name that comes with a lot of history, so I decided to dive into that story for this evening. After this, i'll be getting right back to Production topics, I swear!
We must start where it all began: Fresno California, my hometown. I grew up there with my siblings and mother, generally living in more of the seedy areas of the city. It was never a real big deal, since we moved so often that I never really had a place to stay or call my own. The only things that were constant for myself and my family was each other and that's about it. It wasn't the best way to live, but we did it, and for how little we had, we had family, and that was enough to keep us happy.
Moving so often doesn't really teach you how to make friends, because you don't expect to see people more than a year, so I can't say that I even remember a lot of people that I went to school with. However, it was in junior high that, even though we kept moving, we finally stayed at a school for the long haul.
When you move a lot, you always come into a situation where people have been going to school together for so long it's tough to just jump in and start making friends, so the beginning of the school year is always rough. But you charge through it, taking each day by day, watching others go to lunch with their friends or play sports out in the field. I was always a friendly guy, but sometimes being friendly isn't enough. I figured that I needed to try something else, so I took a couple of electives, one of which was marching band. I always wanted to play something like the drums, so I thought this would kill two birds with one stone.
Per usual, the drumline was already a bit of a close-knit group, so they started me off by playing the cymbals, promising me that one day I could hopefully learn more and move into the other types of drums. At that point, I just took what I could get. I wasn't the only one that was ostracized to playing the cymbals in the corner, oh no, not at all. There were two others that just weren't really for the prime-time of the drumline, young kinds named Chris Yango and Patrick Donnelly. We introduced ourselves to each other, bonding over the fact that we were the worst and had to spend more time learning how to play. We became quick friends, discussing video games, girls, how much everyone else sucked, but quite frankly, never really getting that much better at the drums. But at that point, it didn't matter, we had people that were like us, and that was just fine. Chris brought his good friend Jon Curry out soon enough, and we quickly had our group that we would hang out with all the time. For someone that lived like myself, it was a great time, to have a group that I could confide in, just relax, and be myself. For me, this was what home felt like.
Remember I mentioned games earlier? Yeah, we LOVED games. We would play tons of games over and over, like Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Rush 2049, Final Fantasy games, and various card games (Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc). But there was one game that took up so much of our time: Counter-Strike (that's the old school one, folks). Counter-Strike was the game that we talked about, strategized about, and basically ate, slept, and lived for. It was the one that we would spend hours at cyber cafe's playing.
The best part about it? We were a pretty darn good team. We wiped the floor of so many teams that people would get pretty pissed off at us. But we needed a Clan name. All of good teams had their own clan that they would call and prefix their names with, and with us being so good, we needed one for ourselves. Well, let's be honest, we weren't the best at coming up with names at the time, so the best we could think of was -}ACP{- and then each of our code names. ACP stood for AlvinChrisPatrick. Told you we weren't that creative. :) Jon didn't play nearly as much as us, so we just kept it for the three of us, but he would join in whenever he was available.
-}ACP{-Scout (Chris, because he liked using the scout gun), -}ACP{-TeamPat (Patrick, because he always went off on his own), and -}ACP{-Spiffer. "But Alvin," you might ask, "where did you get Spiffer?" Well, good folks, I honestly have no idea. It was the first thing that popped into my head, and I really enjoyed writing it, so that's what I picked. Yup.
BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. The point was, from then on we had our group. Our friends. We had something that no one else could take away from us. For me, it was the first time that I had something that was just mine. No one else's.
We got pretty darn good. We would wreck house so often that we almost went pro, but we weren't coordinated enough to actually take on a lot of the elite teams, but we could definitely handle some scrimmages in our hometown. I have to say that those days were some of the best, because the only thought was how were were going to get more cash to head to the cyber cafe and keep on playing our favorite game.
That was a long time ago now, just about 15 years. In that time, I moved to Orange County, got a job in the game industry, my friends have kids and a family, and are happy in their lives. Time had passed, and while we haven't lost touch, we just don't see each other as much as we used to.
I wrote this today because I wanted to express something. People ask me why I use Spiffer. Or why I have ACP in my gamertags. ACP and Spiffer, to me, are mine. They are my link to the past, the link to a great part of my childhood, the thing that keeps me forever connected to some of the best friends that I know.
I wrote this today to say one thing. Times change, people change, you move, you get angry, you hurt, you lose touch. But like ACP and Spiffer, special symbols and great friendships will overcome.
-ACN
