The Happiest Days of Our Lives (9 page)

June, 1984

Simon and I finally got two other kids to join our group: Robert and his friend David. The four of us were officially declared “the nerds” by the cool kids at school, and we played almost every weekend. I started carrying my dice, a couple of pencils, and folded-up character sheets with me everywhere I went, stored in a pleather Casio calculator case that my dad gave me.

The Satanic Panic, fueled by Jack Chick’s “Dark Dungeons” and some “investigative” reporting on television news magazines, reached our suburban school. I brought home a letter from school warning our parents about the dangers of
Dungeons and Dragons
. My parents laughed it off, but Robert’s did not; he was prohibited from playing with us anymore, and since he brought David into our little group, David left too. Then, right when school was about to get out for summer, we were dealt a total party kill: Simon’s mom was moving the two of them to Indiana.

July, 1984

With Simon gone and the Satanic Panic at its peak, I didn’t have anyone to play with. My books and character sheets slowly made their way into my closet as Atari began to creep further and further into my life. Then, for my birthday, Aunt Val gave me a book called
Lone Wolf
. It was like Choose Your Adventure, but you had a character sheet and rolled dice for combat! It wasn’t D&D, but it was close enough.

1987

I was a freshman in high school and gained admittance to a group of geeks via my friend Darin. We played tons of geeky games together, watched
Holy Grail
at least once a month, and argued the finer points of sci-fi. I was finally surrounded by geeks again, only this time I was proud to be counted among their number.

One day, sitting in Darin’s house and playing
Illuminati
, I said, “Hey, do any of you guys ever play D&D?”

There was a collective snort of derision.

“What?” I asked.

“We play
GURPS
,” one of them said.

“What’s that?”

A knowing look passed among them.

Within a few weeks, I started in my first Space/Old West/Magic campaign.

June, 1992: The Dark Ages

I met and began dating a girl who didn’t appreciate gaming at all and thought it was entirely for nerds. I collected my games and put them all into storage.

March, 1993: The Renaissance

We broke up. The games came back out of storage. I’m pretty sure my 40K Space Marine armies held a bit of a grudge.

1999

After living together for three years, my girlfriend and I moved out of Sin and into Married Life. I began counting the days until I could introduce her children, who I was raising as if they were my own, to the wonderful world of gaming.

After we’d spent about six years in each other’s lives, I began gradually to introduce the kids to some of the geekier things I like. By the time the
Lord of the Rings
movies came out, they were ready to take their first steps down a path that began in a tavern and ended in a dragon’s lair.

February, 2004

The boys and I spent a week or so creating characters and discussing the rules, building excitement for the adventure. I stayed up way too late each night after the kids went to bed, poring over websites and my rule books, simulating combats and creating NPCs. It was the first time I’d run an adventure since
The Isle of Dread
in sixth grade, when I scored a Total Party Kill during the first encounter. I never got to sit behind the screen again.

I sat at the dining room table and reviewed cleric spells while the
Two Towers
soundtrack inspired my imagination. Ryan came out of his room and sat down across from me.

“Whatcha doing?” he asked.

“Just refreshing my memory. It’s been—” I paused. “Well, it’s been a really long time since I ran a campaign, and I want…”
I want you to think I’m cool. I want to do something special for you. I want to share something with you that isn’t sports-related, so your dad can’t take it over and force me out of it.

“I want to make sure you guys have a good time,” I said. “It’s important to me.”

“I’m so excited!” he said.

“Me too.”

He absentmindedly rolled some d20s I’d scattered across the table.

“Can I roll up an extra character, just for fun?” he asked.

“Is your homework finished?”

“Yeah. Everything’s done, and I worked ahead in Biology.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“Dude. That’s super-responsible. I’m proud of you.”

He smiled. “So can I?”

“Sure,” I said. “The dice bags are on my desk.”

He walked over to my office. My desk, normally buried under computer books and writing journals, was covered with gaming books:
GURPS
,
Mutants and Masterminds
,
Car Wars
, too many Cheapass games to count, and—of course—a stack of D&D books ten feet tall.

“It’s 4d6, right?” he called out.

“Yep, 4d6. And you—”

“—throw away the lowest roll,” we said in unison. “Ryan, I…”

I love it when that happens.

“I have an extra character sheet here that you can use.”

“Okay.” I went back to my books. A moment later, four six-sided dice dropped from Ryan’s hand and rolled across the table. “Since you’re the DM, will you watch my rolls?”

“You bet! This is…”

This is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

“This is really fun.”

He picked up the dice and threw them: 2—4—5—1.

“Eleven?! Oh man!” he said.

“Eleven isn’t a bad roll at all.” I noticed something familiar about the dice. Two of them were black, with red numbers. There was a skull where the 1 would have been.

“Hey, I have dice just like those in—”

My heart stopped. I ran into my office.

There it was, in the cool blue glow of my monitor, atop my
Freedom City
sourcebook: an open bag of dice.
My
bag of dice. The black one, with the red pyramid from the Bavarian Illuminati on it. A clear d10 and two brilliant blue d12s sat near its open top. Its drawstring was cast carelessly across the side of the book, dangerously close to my Zen fountain.

Ryan slowly walked into the room.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“You…you touched my dice!” I felt a little woozy.

“Well…yeah.”

“No, Ryan, you…”

You are about to see your stepdad as the old gamer geek he really is. The gamer geek I hope you’ll be one day…you know, this is actually kind of cool.

“You can’t ever touch my dice,” I said, patiently.

“Uhh…aren’t they all,” he made quote marks with his fingers, “‘your dice’?”

“Technically, yes, but these here, in this bag, they’re the ones I’ve played with since I was in high school.”

He furrowed his brow and looked at me while I put “my dice” back into my bag. A white d8 with worn-off blue numbers, the clear d10 with white numbers, a green d6 that’s really a poker die…

“When I was younger, these dice…”

These dice were some of the most important things in my life. Well, I have some perspective now.

“These dice were a big part of my life,” I said.

I held the bag in my hand and looked at him. For the first time in eight years, I saw some of myself reflected back.

“You know what? It’s not that big a deal. I’d just rather you used some other dice,” I said.

“So can I re-roll that eleven since I used…” He lowered his head, and spoke in a grave voice: “The Forbidden Dice?”

We laughed together.

“Eleven is a good roll, Ryan.”

“I know, but twelve gets me plus one.”

“Okay. You can re-roll. But if you get a lower roll, you have to keep it.”

I tossed him my green “community” bag.

“Deal,” he said, as he dug out four dice.

We walked back into the dining room and sat back down at the table. Ryan threw 2—5—2—1.

“Nine?! Oh man!”

“I bet that eleven is looking pretty good now, isn’t it?”

“Shut up.” He laughed.

He collected the dice, held them thoughtfully for a second, and said, “Wil, I’m sorry I used your dice. I just thought that bag was really cool.”

“It’s okay, Ryan. Someday…”

Someday, I’ll give that bag, and all the dice in it, to you.

“Someday, you’ll have your own dice, and your own dice bag, and you’ll understand.”

He threw 4d6: 6—6—4—4.

“Sixteen! Rock!” He threw the goat.

On an index card, he wrote a one and a six beneath his nine.

“Ryan, I…”

I love you more than you’ll ever know. Thank you for sharing these moments with me.

“I can’t wait to play with you guys tomorrow night.”

June, 2007

As much as I want to, I can’t hate dodgeball or the “cool” kids who tormented me throughout the years. Without that influence, I probably wouldn’t have discovered gaming, and no single thing contributes as much to my geekiness or brings me as much joy.

I still flinch when I hear that hollow
pang!
of a dodgeball, though. That’s a saving throw I think I’ll always fail.

in which time is well spent…

      
Occasionally, an introduction adds nothing to a story. This is one of those times.

N
ot too long ago, while Anne took Ryan to the airport to head back to school, Nolan and I found ourselves in the living room. He sat at the desk and played Warcraft. I sat on the couch, bored with football and contemplating some Xbox.

“Hey,” I said, “let’s play Frisbee.”

“Mmmhhhuuhhh,” he said, clicking the mouse and doing whatever it is you do when you play Warcraft.

“Hey,” I said again. “Nolan!”

He turned around, still clicking his mouse. “What?”

“I have a hankerin’ to play Frisbee. Let’s go outside and play.”

“A hankerin’?”

“Ah shore dew. Yeehaw!”

He shook his head. “You are so
weird
.”

Weird has recently become Nolan’s go-to word for just about everything. He doesn’t say it unkindly, but it’s a stand-in for lame, gross, uncool, or other expressions of mild disapproval. If I’m too friendly with someone while we’re at the store, it’s weird. When we watched my episode of Criminal Minds together, it was weird to see me being Floyd. When I complimented a little kid on his awesome Darth Vader costume Halloween night, and when I told a mom that dressing her little kids up as Popeye and Olive Oyl was adorable, it was weird.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve mentioned that.”

We looked at each other. I sensed an opening.

“Come on, Nolan, we can sit here and have our backs to each other, or we can do something fun together.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but I thought,
I’m not going to be an old man and wish that I’d played more video games…

“Augh!” he said, with what I hoped was mock irritation. “Why do you have to make so much sense!?”

“Because I’m weird,” I said.

He gave me the I-see-what-you-did-there look. He turned around, typed something into the chat box, laughed, and shut the game down.

“People are so stupid,” he said. “I’m 8 and 1 in this match, but when I stop to talk to you and get killed, some guy on my team tells me that I’m a dipshit. And that guy was 1 and 6.” He shook his head. “This is why I only like to play with my friends.”

“That’s what I’m talking about when I say ‘don’t be a dick,’” I said. “That guy would never talk to you like that if you were face to face.”

“Meh, whatever. I don’t care.” I listened for the sarcasm in his voice that would say, “I care a lot more than I’m willing to admit to you or anyone else,” but I didn’t hear it. I obviously cared about it more than he did, both as a gamer and as a dad.

I walked to the closet where the Frisbee lives. It wasn’t there.

“Oh, it’s still in the trunk of your car,” he said.

“Augh!” I said, imitating what I hoped was his mock irritation. “Let’s go get a new one.”

“Don’t you just want to wait until Mom gets home and you can trade cars?”

“It’ll be dark by then, and I really want to play with you.” It had now become, as we say, a
thing
.

A few minutes later, we stood in a local sporting goods store. I yanked a bunch of 175 gram Frisbees off the rack, trying to get at a particular one near the back.

“Are you getting seven Frisbees?” Nolan said.

“Nope, I’m getting this one.” I handed it to him. “It glows in the dark, so we can squeeze a few more minutes out of the dusk.”

He barely nodded, a generous expression of approval. Apparently glow-in-the-dark stuff is not “weird,” or at least not so weird that it requires comment.

That evening, we played in the street, long after the sky had turned purple and the sun’s rays barely lingered, pink and gold, on the bottoms of clouds in the west. We played until our depth perception couldn’t pick out the softly glowing disc with much accuracy, as the stars were starting to come out.

I woke up the next morning with searing pain in my left arm and shoulder, joined by some familiar pain in my right hip. Even though I was pretty damn achy, it was worth it. I’m not going to be an old man and wish that I’d played less Frisbee with my son.

the big goodbye

      
When we were teenagers, my friend Terry said to me, “You’re a pretty big geek, and you’re part of the biggest geek phenomenon in history…but you hardly ever talk about it. How come?” It was true. I didn’t talk about it very much. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, or didn’t think it was cool, but when I was with my friends, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about work. That reluctance persisted until I wrote “The Saga of Spongebob Vegaspants—or, how I learned to stop worrying and love
Star Trek
” in late 2001 for my book
Dancing Barefoot
. That story and this one bookend a time in my life that was so significant to me, I—well, I’ll just let you read this, and I think you’ll understand why.

L
ast week, I went to Paramount to film some host wraps for a
Star Trek: TNG
DVD documentary, and I discovered that the old cliché is true: You can’t go home again, especially when your home has been torn down and replaced with sets for a Farrelly Brothers movie.