The Enemy

Have you ever found yourself in sharp competition with someone who seems to have you beat at every turn? Not by much, mind you, but just enough to sneak out ahead of you, and secure the victory, every single time. And say this opponent is invisible to you…like a general in another army known only through reputation, and battle results. What would you imagine them to be? Someone tall, I reckon…and strong. Mentally adept, with all of the finest technology at their disposal. A large, handsome, boastful man…relentlessly bent on feeding his enormous ego. Then, say you finally meet this person, face to face…

You are probably unaware of a little game called Geocaching, played by anyone who’s stumbled upon one, or otherwise heard of it. It’s a treasure hunting game that spans the entire globe, linking creatively hidden caches of goodies via GPS coordinates, and a webpage that organizes them. The game is essentially about laid back exploration, but a certain competition is involved for the enthusiasts. The first time a new cache is hidden and posted to the web page, there is customarily a little prize inside for the first person who finds it…not to mention the simple glory of being the "FTF" of the cache, and having your alias engraved at the bottom of the hint.

I received a very fancy Garmin GPS device for christmas, as well as a membership to the site, and since then I have pursued a "first to find" of my own…but no matter how hard I try, no matter how quickly I get there after receiving word of it’s posting, one particular individual has always gotten there first. The same person. Every time. On one occasion the cache was only three blocks from my house, and I literally watched the message appear in my inbox as it was posted. I threw on my shoes, scribbled the coordinates down, jumped in my car, buzzed over there, looked around frantically, found it, opened it triumphantly……only to find his signature. What took me ten minutes, only took him five.

Needless to say, I hated him. And while the rest of the local caching community doubtfully shared my particular degree of animosity, I knew they were with me in some degree of frustration. The person literally found every single cache that has been posted since christmas, despite a large group of people also gunning for it.

God, I thought, what a fucking loser. This dude must have absolutely nothing better to do with his time…and he must have a GPS that blows mine away. I could see him, in my imagination…bombing around in his 2009 SUV with Onstar, a big smug self-satisfactory grin on his face.

I had to meet him…or at least see him.

An event came up just last night…which is basically a sort of meet-and-greet for players (posted on the website like any other cache, only with a specific time and date noted). I followed the coordinates to an airport bar when the time was right, and walked into a regular party. There were tons of them, more people that I would have imagined. Mostly older folks, I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person there…but one by one I introduced myself by name and alias, bantering with those I had "run into" in the forums and such…secretly trying to track down that one damnable fellow that kept beating me to every single new hide.

And then, by accident, he was pointed out to me by someone I was talking to…and in an instant, my rampant hatred for the fellow turned around. Yeah, that’s him over there…his real name is Carl– an appropriate air of contempt in the person’s voice.

Carl was sitting all by himself at a table. It was painfully obvious right off that bat that he had no money, nor people skills…and that he really just wanted to fit in. He held his GPS device in both hands, an old cheap model not made for off-roading, and he looked incredibly out of place and uncomfortable. You could tell by his clothing that he probably didn’t get out much, and you could tell by the way he looked around that he probably didn’t have many friends…and suddenly it all made sense. All the things I said about him to myself came back to haunt me (what a fucking loser), because once again, I was right without even knowing how right. Right without really wanting to be. It broke my heart.

I introduced myself with an enormous smile, and kept him company at the loner table for the rest of the evening…