Mr Chattanooga Slim

Now who is Mr Chattanooga Slim?

Tis is a long story, he is at this moment in time my other self! Stay with me and I will start at the beginning.

You see, computer games once controlled my life, and it was only when I noticed that I was counting bricks on a house wall that I realised that I needed to do something about it, in fact I needed help. That first time, all those years ago, I managed to solve the problem by simply deleting all of the games from my Computer in one easy swoop of anger. I suffered from withdrawal symptoms of a nasty nature and often stood shaking in Game Shops where hundreds of active games are displayed for the unaware, but I resisted the urges! Over time life got better and I managed to lead a normal and uncontrolled life once again; in amongst society without constant fear of regression. I wrote about this traumatic time in a previous article titled, Computer Mad.

I lasted a few years in happy existence, until one day I could not find anything to do! There I was on a ship at sea and I was just so bored that I entered the games folder of the computer in the Engineering Control Room. Just for a quick look you understand, not to open up any of the games or to play one or anything like that! Anyway, what harm could a little game do to me: I am cured and fully resistant to external influence and when I want to finish the game I will simply press the 'exit' button, like any normal person would do.

I opened up the games file and found a handful of simple and short games for the bored. I looked at them and decided that these games could never exert influence over the human mind, they were simply too small and too boring to do much else except pass the time. And that was exactly what I wanted, just a simple game to pass the time.

Solitaire, Hearts, and a Pool Game! That was my choice.

Lone card games have always sent me to sleep. So I chose the pool game. Down at the pub of an evening I always avoided that pool table like the plague. Had a stack of excuses against playing till after a while everybody finally clicked that I was just no good at it. For some reason my brain and my eyes could not agree and the ball never went where it should. I have tried over and over again to get the coloured balls in the pockets without the white following soon after; and at quiet moments (like when no customers were around) I have practiced on my own but never once does that queue ball do what I want it to do!

Here though, in front of me, was a computerised version of the game. No prying eyes, no smirks and sarcastic comments to live with: no witnesses to my predictable and abysmal performance. This could be the answer to everything: I could practice my Pool Game on the computer and then when I returned home I could enter my local and thrash every person who had previously laughed at my poor efforts.

I opened up that game and as with all games I first worked out the buttons needed for control and the way that the game works. Easy enough! Pool Rules are not that hard to master, the difficulty here being to get the ball in the pocket just like in real life. Anyway, this game was simple enough and it mostly involved pointing the mouse and clicking. Easy and simple, and I found out almost immediately that here in this two-dimensional game I could actually get a ball in a pocket!

I was hooked.

The game itself did not have levels of hardness but instead there was a choice of five computer opponents each one harder than the other. And the one that I chose and stuck with for a long time to come was Mr Chattanooga Slim! I could have played against "Fast Eddie" but he is no fun, never misses a ball and if he gets the first shot he has wiped the table clean before I get to chalk my cue! Mr Slim though was far from perfect, a bit slow on the uptake and always made the most ridiculous of mistakes on the most simplest of shots. He was level one material!

As time went on and I continued to relieve myself of boredom, ostensibly by learning to play pool, I got better and better at the game. After a couple of weeks I found that I could pot around ten balls without falter and fast to boot. I was good and I was better than Mr Slim! In fact I felt so sorry for my unworthy opponent that I used to purposely miss shots so that he could catch up with me and I even let him win occasionally (that's my excuse anyway).

My game became so good and so fast that Chattanooga started to remind me of a poor kid trying to gain a foothold into pub life. Everything he tried to do ended in failure, every ball he potted seemed like an accident and every ball he missed brought a smirk to my face. I thumped my fist in glee every time I potted a ball, and every time Mr Slim got one in the pocket I stuck my finger up at him (the computer) in anger.

I was good! Nay, I was great!

After four weeks of overdosing on coffee and after having played thousands of games of pool against the lowliest of lows Mr Chattanooga Slim I suddenly realized that my world was not as it should be. There I was glued daily to a computer screen, shouting and kicking and bawling and being drawn inside that computer just like the life that I managed to escape from so long ago. I was being controlled by a computer for the second time in my life.

But somehow this was worse. It was not just the fact that I was being controlled but that I was identifying myself with Mr Slim. In fact, as I sat in my Cabin Shivering with shock and fear at what I had once again become, I realized that Mr Slim was actually me in the computer world. Mr Slim is that guy down the Pub that just cannot play pool, that cannot get the angles or power right and who never ever gets a ball in the pocket. He is that guy down the pub that nobody wants to play against and he is that guy that secretly wishes that he could play and win.

It's me! I am Mr Chattanooga Slim. I have found a soul mate inside of a computer and the fact that I have found this out is terrifying. This is far worse than counting bricks on walls or shooting imaginary guns at people on the street, this was terrible. I had identified with a computer generated chip!

I am trying to restart my life once more! Through self therapy and the total destruction of all computing devices, televisions, radios and mobile phones in my house I have managed to regain some sense of proportion and I no long feel the urge to drop imaginary balls into imaginary pockets. It has been a hard battle and I am nearly cured once again but one obstacle has kept me from a full cure!

I keep on asking myself why I had to identify with the lowly form of Mr Slim. If I had at least obtained level five the hardest of levels and played against Fast Eddie, it would have been better than staying at the bottom with the failure. This fact rattles around in my brain and will not go away. I fight hard to cure myself but often I feel that the only answer and cure is for me to get back on that computer and to beat Eddie at his own game. Only then may I pull away and cut the final chord that controls me.

Ooh it hurts!