Now It Can Be Told

J. in His Original Incarnation

Written 25 January, 2011

Now It Can Be Told

More than two years ago-- in mid 2008-- Sweetie and I went grid-jumping and found a friend.I'll call him J..

J. was but a couple of weeks in world and had been hanging out in a sim called The World. He soon visited us on Whimsy and before long was spending considerable time there. We were building the robot sanatorium, which he particularly liked, and he was kind enough to make and send me the voice announcements that  play every minute or so at the robot sanatorium.

Please don’t ask the celebribots for their autographs. Some of them have no arms, and we've confiscated the pens of the ones that do.

Under no circumstances is Bender to be given alcohol. We don’t want a repeat of last Thursday’s incident.

J. was a furry-- a fox-- and would occasionally bring his friends-- also furries-- to play on the land. He was soon a constant feature on Whimsy.

Because of his behavior and in particular his frequent use of :3 to denote laughter, Sweetie and I knew J..was young-- we figured about twenty years old-- but we were shocked when he came to us and told us he was just shy of his 14th birthday.

J. said he had been feeling guilty about misrepresenting his age so he could be on the main grid and asked us for advice.

We told him to follow his conscience, but it was clear what his conscience was telling him. Privately, we prepared to ask him to stay away from Whimsy until his 18th birthday.

J. wrestled with his conscience for a brief time-- it must have been horrible, for he had made friends and was having a great time-- then told us he had decided to deactivate his account and move to the teen grid.

J. asked me if I would hold his creations-- he was forever building and scripting-- until his return. I told him of course I would, but since he would have another avatar he should set permissions to full. He did, and I put one copy of the box he gave me on my prim storage platform (it's a place to offload stuff I infrequently need, keeping my inventory count low). I kept a second copy of J.'s box in my inventory.

And then J. was gone.

Two years and three months went by. J. would check in every once in a while via e-mail to say he had made lots of friends on the teen grid and was having a great time. I would tell him his box was waiting for his triumphant return at age 18.

And then, last week, the teen grid closed and J., now 16, returned to the main grid two years earlier than either he or we had anticipated.His last name is different, of course, but it's the same old J.

I wasted no time dropping his box on him, then deleted my copies from prim storage and inventory.

When we first created Whimsy I set the land rating to mature, but since there's no adult content on the sim, I  reset it to PG when I heard of the teen grid's impending closure. J. is now free to roam our sims. He's spending his time re-exploring. He told me the other day how proud he was to have been able to contribute to the robot sanatorium.

Well, Sweetie and I are proud of J., too. Two years and three months ago, faced with an agonizing decision, he made, we think, the right choice

Welcome back, friend!