It's one thing to be unpopular and quite another to be unaccepted.

In high school I had the unenviable honor of being too nerdy for the popular kids and too popular for the nerdy kids. If you think being rejected by a cheerleader with a perfect smile stings, try being turned away by a dungeon master with a rat tail and a collection of multi-sided dice. (A few years out of high school you realize these arbitrary cliques are meaningless, as rat tails are swapped for brief cases, but the memory of exclusion remains.) This was my high school lot in life, and so I spent my years in public school drifting from clique to clique without a home.

As a social-circle transient, I interacted with a lot of cliques. There were the hackers who dove into dumpsters in the middle of the night, throwing coffee grounds and banana peels aside in search of passwords. They had no higher purpose other than to find access to technology they weren't otherwise allowed to explore.

There were band geeks, but no 3rd-chair clarinetist could penetrate the inner sanctum of cool that was dominated by drummers.

There were also popular kids from different grades who begged me to take them "mallin'," a game only a teenager could devise. The rules were simple—drive dangerously fast toward a pole or embankment and then turn at the last minute. We didn't stop till everyone was screaming. And yet, for as fun as those nights were, the mallin' crew were ghosts during the day. I'm not sure I ever saw them in passing.

And finally, there was an eclectic group of oddball friends who feigned interest in my deep thoughts but secretly pined after my girlfriend. 

And so it was until I dropped out of school and left these cliques behind. My eclectic collection of backstabbers dropped out as well and faded away. I landed a job at a big tech company in server security as so many once-upon-a-time-hackers do.

With this backdrop, it is no wonder that I jumped at the opportunity to play Dungeons and Dragons when a coworker invited me. I had never actually played, although I had dabbled in other role playing universes. This particular coworker had not yet married his sweetheart because they were having a knight-themed wedding, and only a poser wears anything but real platemail. When he walked away from his computer he could initiate its security by saying, "Shields Up!" in Klingon. And he went on to run for congress as a Libertarian. Of course I accepted his invitation.

That weekend we gathered around my non-poser coworker's living room table to create our characters. I asked a couple times for help, but after receiving no response I stumbled through the process. I created a gnome priest. The gnome aspect made him a latent thief (a bit of a stereotype, and I apologize to any gnomes who may be reading), and the priest aspect made him conscious of a higher, spiritual path. So I said my character stole for God. I thought it was beautifully ironic and conflicted, but when I presented my character the only response I got was, "I've never seen that combo before. Doesn't make sense."

But I was undaunted and ready to prove myself in battle. The man to my left had created an ogre, and he spoke in one-syllable sentences for the rest of the night. "Me fight. Me use knife." Funny enough, I had a difficult time carrying on a conversation with him.

Then my moment came. We entered a dungeon and were attacked by skeletons. I weighed my options, surveyed my companions and their relative strength, and decided that the best thing to do was to roll under a bench and hide. The move was perfectly in line with my character's backstory, and my thought was to sneak into the attack at the most opportune moment, but it was the death knell for my future as a D&D superstar. After the attack, my companions ignored me, both in the game and at the table. I was never invited back.

Since those earlier years I have learned a lot about where my place is. I've found that the easiest way to find a clique is to make one, and since my kids are not yet teenagers they still think I am the funniest, handsomest, strongest being alive. Who am I to tell them otherwise?