40k: Hiding Your Addiction
Pimpcron teaches you how to hide your purchases from spouses.
Fancy meeting you all here! This week your trusted confidant Pimpcron is going to help you hide your wargaming addiction from your significant others. There are millions of wargamers affected by this affliction every year; and there is no known cure. So here are some ways you can cover it up.
First of All, Hide Your Purchases
What is a wargamer but just a wallet to be emptied by our plastic crack dealers? While you try to get professional help, you will have to hide your purchases in the meantime.
Under Your Shirt
The simplest place to smuggle in your newly gotten gains is under your shirt. But not only is it obvious, but you’ll have to immediately deliver it to your game storage area. Most keen observers will know something is up when there are sharp corners sticking out of your shirt. You could wear a jacket to help buffer the outline of your box, but not in the warmer months.
“Hold It For a Friend”
Ah, the old phrase that hearkens back to your teenage days. The trick here is to walk in with a fake complaint and address the new item immediately. Ya know, get in front of the issue like a politician. “Man, I just noticed that I accidentally picked up [insert friend’s name]’s box he bought.”
So then you leave the box sitting around for a while and your partner gets used to seeing it. Preferably hide it in your gaming area. Eventually your partner will forget about it and it’s yours!
Change The Package
You need to unbox your purchase and find a new, unsuspecting package to bring it into the house with. DO NOT, under any circumstances choose a package that your investigator will be interested in opening. For example, if we are talking about a female partner, a poor choice of box-switching would be things like feminine hygiene products, chocolates, or a box labeled “pumpkin spice”. If the partner is male, poor choices would include boxes that used to contain meat, alcohol, or porn. Use your head people. The elderly love denture glue, parents will open boxes of coupons, and girlfriends will open anything that might even remotely smell like another woman. Just stick with stereotypes and you’ll probably be fine.
No you fool! She will find all of your recent purchases!
Kiester It
This method is for only the most dedicated guilt-ridden gamers. It originates in the prison system and involves exactly what it sounds like it involves. On the plus side, your spouse is very unlikely to find it as you smuggle it into the house via body cavity. On the down side . . . is every other aspect of doing this.
Part of the problem is that you’ll have to unpackage the item(s) and God help you if you bought anything Chaos. Those things are covered in spikes. But where there is a will, there is a way and unless your significant other works for the TSA, they will never find it. It is normally recommended to wash your models before priming to remove any mold release residue, and this point is probably much more important than usual if you have used this method. Paint pots are probably the best choice if you feel that you must smuggle something this way.
Secondly, Hide the Evidence
Paying For All of This
What you need to do in order to covertly pay for this stuff, is hide it somewhere in your budget. If you use some sort of budgeting app like Peachtree or something that your significant other has access to, hide your purchases on an unrelated line item. It’s best to choose something in your budget that nobody will find out about for many years to come. Do you set aside money for your kids’ college? Sounds like somebody’s getting a Reaver Titan! Have dental work you need done? Make that a line item as if you’re saving for it, but use it to feed your plastic crack addiction! If we are being honest, pretty much any of us would be willing to deal with a lifetime of degenerative dental health and ever-increasing mouth pain to buy more little men.
“I can’t chew anything tougher than yogurt, but you should see my army!”
Hobbyist “Track Marks”
If you hobby for any amount of time, you’ll know what I mean by Hobby Track Marks. It’s those little tiny red lines of scabs that checker-board our hands from hobby knife cuts. This will be one of the first things a loved one will look for when they suspect you’ve fallen off the wagon. Let’s say you’re wife is away and you’ve pulled out your secret stash of sprues that you hide in your attic. You greedily assemble your little soldiers, and then it happens: your knife slips and you accidentally leave a ¼ inch cut in your finger. You need to immediately sterilize, close and seal the wound with something like Liquid Bandage. If you can stop the bleeding, then the scab line won’t form! Then you can keep assembling your dirty secret without being caught . . . for now.
Meeting For Games in Secret
You need to find an underground group of guys that need to hide their obsession from their loved ones like you do. Discretion is paramount in this secret society, and it can be tricky to set up gaming meet-ups. I’m not allowed to publish any of our Dark Net forums or our secret handshakes we use, but if you hang around gaming stores during your lunch break long enough, you’ll figure it out. Though I can tell you some of our code words we use for things, so you will at least know what people are really talking about when you hear it.
Okay guys, so back here next week at the same time?
Here are the terms we use for the different armies:
Shrooms – Orks
Guppies – Tau
Church – Space Marines
Pennies – Adeptus Mechanicus
Boom – Imperial Guard
Pr0n – Dark Eldar
Skinnies – Eldar
Spikes – Chaos
Scales – Daemons
NomNoms – Tyranids
Nickels – Grey Knights
Bolts – Imperial Knights
Here are the sales terms we use when describing the condition and number of what we’ve got for sale:
“Basic” – Still on the sprue
“Unbuttered” – Assembled, not primed
“Buttered” – Assembled & primed
“Clown” – Bad to medium paint job
“Choice” – Above standard paint job
“Primo” – Pro-painted
“Crumb” – Single model
“Slice” – Complete unit
“Loaf” – Vehicle
“Bakery” – A large lot of assorted models
Now that you know our lingo, let’s take a test just to make sure you don’t get it wrong and make a fool of yourself.
A dude comes up to you in a dark alley behind a Gamesworkshop store. He gets really close and whispers, “Yo man, I just got my hands on a hot new Guppy Bakery. The whole Bakery is Primo, except for two of the slices being Choice and one being Clown. You wanna see ‘em?”
I’ll let you figure it out. I’ve said too much already. I better go. I hear wife-sounding footsteps.
[I yell behind me, “No honey, of course I’m not blogging again! That’s ridiculous! You know I’ve been clean for months!”]
Okay, this is all ridiculous, or is it? How far would go to hide your obsession?
Want to witness my slow descent into madness, first-hand? Check out my blog at www.diceforthedicegod.com
