I.
“Please enter your name and password to log into the Chatterbox forums.”

Name: Fiver
Password:

“Welcome to the Chatterbox forums, Fiver. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

Fiver logged in to the Chatterbox forum, and clicked the “New Posts” button. There were over a thousand new messages since Fiver had gone to bed earlier that morning. Chatterbox was a very active forum. The site had over 45,000 members, and was the tenth most active message board on the Internet. Fiver had been posting since the boards came into existence many years ago. Fiver wasn’t sure how long ago it was; his first thread was in 1999 announcing that Bill Clinton had been impeached for perjury in the whole Monica Lewinsky mess. Fiver looked at the clock on his computer. It was exactly noon. Fiver had gone to bed at around four that morning, spending the night up either playing Vice City or checking Chatterbox. One of the threads Fiver noticed was “Tell why you’re a loser.” Fiver decided to contribute with his life story.

Re: Tell why you’re a loser.
Time: 1234 11/05/2006

“It’s a long story. I’ve probably told it before on Chatterbox, but here it is again.

Right now I’m 30 years old, and living with my mother in Las Vegas. Yes, 30 and living with my mom. My dad ran off from home when I was 7, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. I don’t even know if he’s alive. He was a major alcoholic, so he might have kicked the bucket for all I know. Wouldn’t bother me, I personally hoped he moved to that town in Michigan with that nutty drunk serial killer.

But anyway, after my dad left, I started first grade, which was hell in itself. I was socially awkward, and fat as hell. I weighed about 150 pounds at age 7. The weirdest part of this is now I’m 5’10 and I don’t weigh that much. But from first grade up until my freshman year of high school I got made fun of constantly for being fat.

On the first day of my freshman year, I snapped. I was walking to my house, when one of the neighborhood assholes started picking on me. I decided to play a trick. I ran home crying my eyes out, trying to lure the prick to my house. I got to my back yard, with him still following. I hid in my back yard, and waited with my metal baseball bat. He found me, and I started beating the shit out of him with it. He ran away bloodied up, and that was the last time I got made fun of by anyone.

Strangely enough, around the same time, I started exercising. I got out a bicycle, and started riding up the hill where I live. It’s almost ten miles up and down again. I huffed and puffed my way through it at first, but after six weeks or so, I got pretty fit. The people at my school were impressed.

Also around that time, I started joining extracurricular activities. I joined Drama Club first, then Science Club and track. As fit as I was, and the story of the prick and the bat behind me, no one dared pick on me for Drama Club and Science Club.

I had my girlfriends as well, losing my virginity at 15 to a senior girl. That was fun. My true love came sophomore year; a girl named Gina Yates. I fell in love with her, but she never showed any interest at me. I followed her around, almost to the point of stalking. I don’t know what happened, I just kinda went nuts. Finally at the Homecoming dance, I just followed her around, trying to get her to dance with me. She threatened to get a restraining order against me right at the dance. I was humiliated. She then got in her car, and drove home.

She didn’t live to carry out the restraining order threat. As she was crossing a highway near my high school, a semi came and hit her car. She was killed instantly. I never really got over that.

In order to block the misery I had at this, I started joining more extracurricular activities, until I had the following:

Drama Club
International Thespian Society
Science Club
Track
Soccer
Basketball
Baseball
National Honor Society

I also enrolled in every Advanced Placement course my school offered. Senior year, I took seven classes, six of which were AP. I did well on all the exams.

By junior year, I had gotten really ambitious with my future. I decided to apply to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

In reality, I was still miserable over losing Gina. I thought about her every day. I wasn’t happy. My mother started to grow worried about me. Then came Graduation, and I was first in a class of five hundred. There’s a famous picture of me shaking hands with the guy who I beat up to within an inch of his life with the baseball bat freshman year. He ended up joining the Marines, and is currently serving in Afghanistan, last time I checked.

That August, I started my first year at the Naval Academy. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, that was rough. I knew I was in for hell when on the first day they woke us up at 6:30 AM, and had us memorize New York Times articles, and then recite them to drill sergeants at 7. Only after that did we have breakfast. It did keep me busy, and for a while my mother thought Brian Fullford, her son, would make a proud naval officer one day.

But it wasn’t meant to be. The first of this month was ten years since it happened. We were doing war exercises, me now being an upperclassman. I was aboard a hovercraft, and we were supposed to land on shore on a night landing.

Well, things didn’t go as planned. We were about a hundred feet from shore, and Carl, a buddy of mine, fell off the hovercraft. I didn’t know he had fallen off, and I ordered full speed ahead. The hovercraft ended up running over Carl, killing him.

Oops.

Needless to say, the officials at the Navy were not pleased with this. I ended up taking a plea bargain saying that they would not court-martial me if I agreed to be expelled from the Naval Academy. Hey, beats Leavenworth, I thought.

I returned to Las Vegas with my mother, and I’ve been living with her ever since. I tried to get a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart, but that was too stressful for me. I know, I know, two years at the Naval Academy was fine, but Wal-Mart was too much.

I’ve stopped exercising, and right now, I think I’m no better off than I was in eighth grade. I live with my mother, I have a nasty resume, and I haven’t gone on a date in years.

My daily routine now consists of getting up anywhere from noon to four in the afternoon, then eating Cheesy Poofs or some other junk food, then watching TV, playing video games, or dicking around on the Internet, and then I go to bed some time when everyone else is getting up for work or school.

Why my mother puts up with this, I don’t know. I’ve heard her say that she lets me live with her because she has no husband now and she would be lonely without me. She’s currently 60, and in good health. It’s sad when a mother keeps her grown son around just to alleviate loneliness. And it keeps me from being on the street, so it all works out.

It still sucks though.

Brian Fullford”

It had taken Fiver half an hour to write all that. He then went into the kitchen, and made himself some Ramen. His mother was watching TV. Fiver cooked the Ramen, and sat down on the couch.

Perhaps, he thought, one day his life would be fun again.