Laughter

A while back I wrote a guide for a game called "The Hobbit" (the game was excellent by the way) and I frequently receive e-mails from people who usually don't take the time to read the guide and simply e-mail me with their questions, expecting me to take time out of my life to help them with their gaming problem that they could have simply looked at the guide to find: after all, that's what the guide is for.

Most of the time these people don't even bother to respond with a "thank you." I guess they think I'm life-less AIM bot whose only purpose in life is to wait around for questions on games that I can answer.

The following is an e-mail I received recently that caused me to laugh quite a bit. Okay, so perhaps it isn't nice to make fun of people but this case deserves sharing. It's stereotypical of what I sometimes have to deal with.

hey my name is xxxxx and i bought the game the hobbit for ps2 and im on chapter 8 im supposed to go into the cider house now i dont know if my game is bad or what but where there should be a door it looks like as if you are looking outside into the water and it wont let me walk through it its behind bard i cant get into the cider house can you tell me if there is a door there and its just my game or am i doing something wrong if i jump into the water i can see the cider house and ppl standing there even check points but it wont let me get into it please help if you can im about to throw the game through a wall thanks if you can

After a properly written response on my part (albeit confused because I have no idea what she's talking about):

ok so i have done that believe me i love play station but there is no place that i can get into across from him is a place that has side rails on the steps right well it wont let me in ive gotten all the jems in the water even the white one ive walked along the building ive jumped into the water i think i have done everything ive saved at all the save points just to see what would happen and nothing do you know what i mean when i say the door behind bard isnt there that its blue is it like that in your game there isnt even a sign in front of anything that it will let me read when i first got to that level it did but not now i have no idea what im missing and im pretty good at finding what i need to do

The punctuation police will come and find you! Do you need someone to help you fix your broken shift key! Something! Anything! I have no idea what you're asking of me!

I responded with a request for a photo of the problem she's having. In this case, a picture is certainly worth a thousand run-on words.......