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The following story was commissioned by Ethan Gold's grandparents. But it was written for Ethan himself. So I talked to Ethan. Like most 12-year-olds, he didn't exactly open up about his aspirations, strengths and loves. That's totally normal, he's 12 years old - that stuff shouldn't be known yet. But he told me he loved gaming and had enjoyed a little woodworking with his grandfather Abe Gold. That was enough for the below - a story dedicated to Ethan Gold figuring it all out...

H.U.D.

At first, the morning after my Bar Mitzvah, I thought it was totally normal. Okay, well, it was a little strange that nobody had thought to tell me about it beforehand. But it all fit together just like you’d kind of expect. Thinking back on it, I gotta wonder whether knowing how absolutely mind-blowingly weird it was would have changed much. I guess I’ll never know.

You Muggles, Normies, Squibs and Mundies probably have no idea what I’m talking about. But I know there are a few others like me who already know the score. You know how adults will go on and on about how a Bar Mitzvah represents a transition to adulthood, and specifically responsibility. Some will even talk about how G-d keeps score and all of a sudden you start earning your own points (or losing them) as soon as you hit that magical age of 13 (or 12 for girls).

Well, that’s kind of like what happened to me. I started knowing the score. I woke up and, for the first time in my life, I had a HUD (or HB) on the upper left-hand side of my vision. For those who don’t play a lot of videogames, HUD stands for Heads-Up-Display and HB for Health Bar. It shows critical information about the state of your character in the game. In this case, about me in the real world. I gotta say, the graphics on my HUD were pretty bad – like my grandparents had designed it. There was a little Magen David (✡) outline that showed health. It was filled up halfway (50%), which was weird because I felt fine. For strength, there was an outline of a bicep that was filled in with blue (💪 93% - almost to the top!). For points, there was just a number (2). All of it was weirdly low resolution, like nobody had bothered to update it since before I was born. Maybe that was when it was installed.

Now, if you have a HUD in your life, you might think this story isn’t for you. I mean, you already know all about it. But this story is sort of a guide to hacking the game we’re both playing in – and I went through a lot to figure that part out.

The first thing I did, when I saw the HUD, is basically go ‘WOW!’ I mean, it was clear where the inspiration for the video games came from. And here I was thinking it was a natural evolution from a need to keep players aware of critical game play information – not something some early game developer copied from their literal real-life experience.

My very next thought was that I wanted to know how to change what was shown, you know adjust the colors and definitely update the graphics a bit – make it me. But I couldn’t find a cursor or any other sort of interface. I knew who to ask, though. My parents must have had their own HUDs for years. So, I ran downstairs to the kitchen. My mom was there and the very first thing I noticed, hovering right above her, was a little status bar. Same info: ✡ health (40%), strength (💪 90%) and points (800). The health worried me a bit, but we’ll get to that. But I’m guessing 800 points wasn’t much – video games tend to score a bit higher than that.

I paused for just a moment, taking it in, and then I basically shouted: “MOM! How do I customize the HUD?!?” As you Muggles would expect, she had no idea what I was talking about. The more I tried to explain it (‘heads up display’, ‘points tracker’, ‘thing you can see that you couldn’t before your Bat Mitzvah’), the more and more confused she got. I tried the same thing with my dad (✡ 35%, 💪 85%, points: 600). Same result. I knew my younger brother wouldn’t be any help. He hadn’t turned Bar Mitzvah yet. And as you’d expect, he didn’t even have his own status bar.

So, I ate breakfast, grabbed my lunch and my backpack and went to school. I saw everybody’s status. A lot of people weren’t awesome in the health department; a lot of people didn’t have a whole lot of points but – among my friends at least – a lot of people were rocking the Strength scores.

Naturally, I started asking everybody about their HUD. They’d know what a HUD was. But nobody had a clue what I was talking about. They started to act like I was really messed up. So, I stopped talking about the HUD. I was already weird enough.

But I was curious about how to score points. I mean, who wouldn’t be? So, I started talking to various and sundry adults asking them – now that I was Bar Mitzvahed – how to score points in the game of life. They all thought I was being quite a bit more metaphorical than I was. But at least they gave me a few pointers.

Mrs. Kleiner, my physics teacher, told me the whole world was deterministic and there was no such thing as points. Basically, I should just enjoy what I had and not overthink it. Mr. Devon, the music teacher, went with surrounding yourself with culture and developing a fine sense of taste. I won’t tell you what the PE instructor said – we have parents reading this. It was the school secretary who had the best advice, “You score points by helping the less fortunate.”

It was worth a try. I headed home after school, lifted $100 from my mom’s purse and biked over to our closest homeless encampment. I handed the money to the first sketchy-looking guy I saw (✡ 10%, 💪 5%, points: -80). He needed it a lot more than I did.

The result? 23 points. Right there and then.

I had it licked.

I headed off towards again towards home, but before I got there, I saw my points disappear. I actually went into negative territory. I turned around and biked back, seriously confused. And do you know what I saw? Well, I’m not going to tell you exactly; we’re going to keep it clean for the sake of our younger readers (and our naïve parents). I will say this: the guy had a huge bag of M&Ms and was just wolfing them down. Somehow, verything about the guy had somehow gotten worse (✡ 8%, 💪 2%, points: -97).

I knew points had something to do with doing good. And even though I meant to do good, I clearly hadn’t. I’ll spare the details of what came next. But basically, I got a lot of advice from a lot of people and nothing really worked out. I barely got any points and my health just kept going down and down and down. Life seemed well, pointless.

It didn’t happen all at once, but I began to spiral. You know, endless hours scrolling on my phone and popping Lemon Heads all night. I began to neglect my homework. I began to eat Whoppers, even in the morning – even when I was by myself. The fact was my health was cratering; my strength was falling off a cliff and I was scoring exactly 0 points. Big whoop.

Eventually, I signed up for a biker gang. We’d roll on our custom BMXes dealing Atomic Fireballs and Jawbreakers to all the kids who dressed up like they had absolutely nothing wrong with them. All of my friends were like me. Stuck at the bottom and going nowhere.

My low point was when I was pulled over by a state trooper. I got caught with an open can of Boba and it didn’t take a blood sugar test to know I shouldn't have been behind the handlebars.

I spent the night in detention (my bedroom) and when I got out in the morning I got sent to a parent-sanctioned psychological evaluation. They wanted to know what was wrong with me. I figured this guy, given his broad professional background with messed up kids, must have come upon somebody else with a HUD – at least in the literature. But he didn’t. He just thought I was crazy, prescribed who knows what and send me on my way.

I kinda zoned out then. Staying in my room, ditching school. You know the drill. One day I went out for a walk. No idea why – except that I couldn’t bike given my DUI conviction. As I came past the oldest house in the neighborhood (the place really didn’t fit in, it wasn’t particularly impressive), I heard this sawing sound. I don’t know why I did it, but I walked up the guy’s driveway. Once I worked out the sound was coming from the back, I went to his side gate and into his backyard. There was this whole shed there. I walked to the shed’s entrance and then I saw it. There was an old guy working there. More importantly, he had tens of thousands of points. His health was 95%. While his strength wasn’t awesome (65%), it was more I had by that point.

I just stared. I’d never seen anything like it.

Eventually the old guy looked up and said, “Can I help you?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think you can.”

I don’t why I did it, but I told him about the HUD. I expected him to just blow me off. But HE HAD ONE TOO.

I mean, weird. His was a little older than mine and it apparently had some kind of abacus because digital graphics hadn’t yet been invented when he’d been born, but he had the same exact thing as I did. Only, he was rocking the game of life.

“What’s your secret?” I asked.

The very first thing he taught me? How to turn it off. Apparently, you have to close your right eye and jump on your left foot three times and then it just disappears. Not seeing how I was doing and how everybody was doing… I don’t know, it was kind of immediately liberating. I mean, wow.

Then the old guy showed me what he was doing. He was building a bunkbed for his grandchildren. He made sure I wasn’t high on sugar and then let me help out. At the end of the day, I felt better than I had in years.

Day after day, I came back. Always, there was some new project. Cleaning up some trash. Repairing the fence. The old guy even gave me a little advice, “Start every day by making or fixing something simple. Then you’ll get everything off to a positive, creative, footing.”

I did exactly that. His whole workshop was decked out with all sorts of tools. I came up with the idea of wooden dogs with moving parts for the old age home up the block. We worked through it together and I ended up making a few of them. It was awesome.

I couldn’t do everything there, though. The guy would never let me into his house. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I couldn’t come in. Well, what’s a kid going to do with that?

One time I just really needed to use the bathroom, you know. I didn’t have time to go home. Really. And I was so curious. So, I snuck through his back door, edged my way past his kitchen and I found the bathroom. I was just about to go in when I saw him. He was working on this huge computer workstation with six monitors and all sorts of sophisticated-looking engineering stuff on them.

I just stopped and stared. I forgot all about the bathroom. Eventually the old guy turned around and saw me.

“What are you working on?” I asked, trying to sound all innocent.

“You know much about prosthetics?” he asked. He didn’t seem angry.

I shook my head.

“The next generation of prosthetics will actually connect to nerves so they can move like normal limbs. But it is very hard to connect with very many nerves – there are limits to what surgeons can do. So, I’m developing electro-biological ‘nerves’ that can actually find their counterparts and connect to them autonomously. Just get the arm close and it will finish the job.”

“Wow.” I said. And then, “How can I help?”

The old guy kind of smiled. “You can’t. You don’t know enough or understand enough. If you want to help with this kind of thing – and not just the woodworking I do for fun – you need a whole lot more education than you already have.”

With that, he turned back to his computer.

I thought about that for the rest of the day. It was sort of gut check. I could toy around, but I couldn’t do the big stuff? I thought about it for the rest of the week. And then the month. I know, I’m a little slow. But he was right. I could do little things with my hands, but I could probably do a whole lot more with my mind.

I started to stop ditching school. I worked hard; I caught up. I started doing really well. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to work on, but I knew that my effort meant there’d be a much bigger chance of whatever I worked on being important.

It must have been a year later when I was playing Fortnite with my little brother. He was about to have his own Bar Mitzvah. I had no idea whether he’d get a HUD or not – probably not. But I decided to help him out anyway. You know, give him a little advanced warning.

“You see your HUD?” I said, indicating the game.

He nodded.

“The same kind of thing exists in real life.”

“Whaddya mean?” he asked.

“Well, real life is like a game. And you have a character status, even if you don’t know it. There are three basic things. Strength is the resources you have to change the world. Even if it is weak, you can do a lot. Health is about knowing what your mission is – having a purpose. And points…” I kind of drifted off.

“Yeah,” said my little brother, “What about points?”

Had I worked out the points? I didn’t know. So, I stood up, closed my right eye and jumped on my left foot three times. And there I had it.

✡ 95%

💪 95%

points: 924

As I watched, my points just started racking up. And, just then, I got it.

“Points,” I said, “Are all about helping other people figure out how to score.”