There is a secret I have that I have been keeping to myself for quite some time now. It is not, as some of the more depraved among you may think, some deviant sexuality. I don't have a thing for feet. It is also not some bizarre physical oddity. No tail hides under my pants; no sixth toe inside my shoe. Nor do I have an unhealthy obsession with Twilight, although that does hit a little closer to the mark. No, my secret is a bit more mundane, and a in some ways a bit more embarrassing. It began, innocently enough, with a book; The Lord of the Rings.
Let it be known, if it is not already, that I am a nerd. "What's the big deal?" you may ask, "There are plenty of nerds nowadays." This is true. The ranks of nerddom have swollen lately with all of the big budget, Hollywood comic book adaptations and the advent of the computer age. But, true nerds know, if you have never cowered on the playground, lunch money clutched tightly in hand, or if you have never lost a friendship over which was better, DC or Marvel, then you are no nerd. You are a Johnny Come Lately to our small, lame party. I was a nerd from the way back. I read comics. I obsessed over Star Wars and Trek. I lost much lunch money to those gifted with clear skin and athletic ability. My credentials are impeccable.
The Lord of the Rings was not my entre into the world of the unpopular, that had been made years earlier whilst reading the bad novelizations of the Star Wars movies in third grade, but it was my introduction to a certain sub-sector of nerdiness, fans of fantasy. Sure, everyone is well aware of the sci-fi aficionados, and of the comic book fanboys, but often overlooked are the sword and sorcery set. These are the kids who dream of dragon slaying and noble quests, the ones who can quote both Beowulf and Robert Jordan, the ones to whom Gary Gygax is a hero. They gained some notoriety with Peter Jackson's films; a little more with the Harry Potter series, but they remain still largely in the shadows. Their brand of nerdiness is even looked down upon by other nerds. What could they possibly be into that brings such scorn and derision from even their fellow outcasts you ask; two words, Dungeons and Dragons.
I know; I can hear the laughter from here.
It was not a quick route from average sci-fi/fanboy nerd to closet D&D nerd for me. My path was not paved with gaming manuals, but with novels. The Lord of the Rings trilogy led me to Tolkien's other works. Then on to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and Terry Brooks' Shannara series. Finally, I came to the vast array of Dungeons and Dragons Forgotten Realms novels. I first picked them up with little knowledge of the game. I saw them as a good way to indulge my fantasy habit. I had grown accustomed to long, multi-part stories and these books fit the bill perfectly; there were literally hundreds to choose from. I was in a little corner of nerd heaven, but I was still not in that darkest of corners occupied by the role players.
I had made brief forays into the realm of role playing before; nights at summer camp playing Magic the Gathering on borrowed cards (mostly critiquing the artwork like any good comic nerd would do), minutes stretching into hours spent flipping through the pages of the AD&D Player's Guide at the bookstore trying to figure out what the hell THAC0 meant, and reading strange threads on early AOL message boards filled with talk of multisided die and character class. But, I kept all of this at arms length. I could recognize that being into the X-Men and Star Wars could be, if not understood, at least tolerated by most of my peers. And, I hoped to capitalize on a change of schools in the eighth grade by forcing myself out of the role of nerd and into a role that gave me a better chance of keeping my lunch money and perhaps getting laid (adolescent hormones were in full swing). So I buried my interest in D&D the game, and hid my love of D&D the novels through both high school and college.
Oddly enough, my real introduction to D&D came while in the army. My company had been tasked with the unenviable task of providing an honor guard to the various funerals of veterans around Kansas. This task involved sitting in a van, driving for hours on end, providing a final honor to those who had served before us (which took about twenty minutes on average) and then climbing back into the van for hours more driving. I was in a signal company, and signal units are mostly made up of nerds of one kind or another; at least 75 percent nerds anyway. It is where they put the guys who score high on the standardized tests. I mostly slept at first on these trips; Kansas is extremely boring to drive across. After a few days of sleeping entirely too much, I decided to relinquish the back seat and stay awake to see what the other guys were doing for 5 or 6 hours at a clip. Much to my amazement, they were scribbling in notebooks and rolling oddly shaped dice into a shoe box.
I, of course, demanded an explanation to this odd behavior. They explained that they were playing D&D. I didn't hesitate to join in. It took an hour or so to explain the basic rules to me, and I joined the game on the ride home. Granted, this was not the most sophisticated of gaming sessions, it is a bit hard to get fully into role playing while leaning over the bench seats of a government issue van, but it was fun, and nerdy, and a great way to pass the time. It quickly became a habit with us. We would take turns running the game, argue about the proper application of the rules, and, generally speaking, fully expose our nerdiness without shame or self consciousness.
The game followed us home, and we set up a weekend session where we could more fully indulge in the strange, fantasy world we were creating. Books were bought, dice were rolled, and Chinese food was consumed en masse. When we were all deployed to Iraq, our Monster Manuals and D20's came with us. We found guys from other units that wanted to join in. We welcomed the chance to escape the war by imagining ourselves fighting goblins and evil wizards. Was it nerdy? Extremely. Was it embarrassing? At times. Was it instrumental in keeping me and my friends sane while we were trapped in an insane situation? Without a doubt.
So there it is; my admission of being a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. I don't play it that often anymore; I just don't have the time at this point in my life. But, I still read the novels, and I still buy the game manuals. Some of you may laugh. Some of you may shake your heads in bemusement. Some of you may even say, "Holy shit! Him too?" Whatever you may say, know that this game, this supremely nerdy game, sits in a special place in my heart, and that I am not alone in m love for it. I know one or two of you that feel the same. But, I did keep it quiet. Aside from the occasional paladin joke to sniff out the other super nerds, I kept it for myself. No more though. I am proud to be a nerd; even if it is a variety of nerd that has still not found its place in the burgeoning world of accepted nerddom.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
My First Comic
When I was a kid my mom would pack me and my brother, with grandma along for good measure, into the car and plow up I-75 to Higgins Lake in Northern Lower Michigan. There was a ratty lakeside cabin that we would rent for a week or two from the American Legion that became our regular vacation spot over the years. I still don't know if this was because of the relatively inexpensive nature of the place, or because my mother's best friend from high school owned a similar, but nicer, cabin just down the shore. Probably a little of both.
The good things about the place was that it was right on the lake, had a sandy beach running a far as a 10 year old could walk in either direction, and there were usually a bunch of other kids around to hang out with. The bad things were that there were only two bedrooms for four people, there was no shower, and there was no cable. The bedroom issue was addressed by having my younger brother share the bed with my mother while I slept on a tiny roll away cot in the room with my grandmother; I guess we deferred to her age by giving her a bed to herself. The shower situation was not so much of an issue for a kid. Two weeks away from the rigours of personal hygiene was fine for my brother and I, but my mother and grandma would inevitably drag us a mile down the road to the state park where we would sneak into the public shower houses to scrub up well enough to last a day or two. As for the cable, well, there was no help for that. For those two weeks my brother and I, kids who had never known life with less than fifty channels, were seemingly thrust backwards in time to the days of the three national networks and PBS. But that was fine, after a day or two we got used to the idea of limited television.
Overall it was the kind of vacation spot where a kid was left to be a kid. It was miles from town, miles from the closest convenience store, and miles away from any of the things that conspired to make life complicated for the awkward, unpopular, ten year old that I was at home. My brother and I would swim, play in the woods, try to catch chipmunks in hastily rigged traps that would make Wiley Coyote wince, spend endless hours redirecting the flow of a small ice cold spring that ran into the lake next to the cabin, and try our level best not to kill each other arguing about all the previously mentioned things. My mom would sit on the beach and read cheap romance novels. My grandmother would knit or cross stitch. We would all take it easy and enjoy the sun.
The problems came with the rain. There was absolutely nothing to do in that tiny cabin, so we would load into the car, at this point spattered with sap from the pine trees that surrounded the place, and head into Grayling to shop. To be truthful, shopping is not a an accurate description of what we would do. There really weren't any stores to speak of. Grayling is not really a resort town, or at least is was not back then; I couldn't say how it is now. It had, as far as I remember, a grocery store, a Ben Franklin (sort of a craft/discount/general store) a K-Mart, and a Big Boy restaurant. Maybe a McDonald's; I can't recall for sure. Sometimes we would take a little longer drive and head to Houghton Lake where there was a huge craft store. Mostly though, we trekked into Grayling for groceries, dinner out and for something to do in the rain.
It was on one of these trips to the grocery store that I bought my first comic book. Breaking away from my mom and grandmother, I wandered over to the magazine rack to look at the comics. At this point in my life I may have had a few comics to my name; Batman and Superman were as familiar to me as any other kid. But I can't really recall ever picking one out for myself before this point. As I scanned the jumbled rack of Ladies Home Journals, Better Homes and Gardens, and People magazines I finally came to the small selection of comics presumably placed there to keep unruly out of town kids like myself from tearing up and down the aisles of the store. The comic that grabbed my attention was Uncanny X-Men #251. I remember this because I am a nerd, but I also remember this because of the cover; a drawing of Wolverine, crucified on a giant X, atop a mountain of skulls. Maybe it was the quality of the artwork. Maybe it was how different it was from the tame, kid friendly comics which were all I had ever seen up until then. Maybe it was the way that the drawing of a crucified superhero clashed with the Catholic imagery I had always been told was sacred. Whatever it was, I had to have that comic.
I really don't know how I managed to convince my mom to buy it for me. She is perplexed by comics and superheros today, and this is after my brother and I have spent the last twenty years stuffing every spare inch of her house with comics, action figures, sci-fi novels, and all other sorts of nerdy paraphernalia. However I did it, and it most likely involved whining and subtle threats of a mid-market meltdown, I left the store with the comic book and a new obsession that would stick with me well into adulthood. I spent the rest of the day reading and re-reading its multi-paneled pages trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on. It wasn't like the kidcentric Batman and Superman books I had read in the past; with their self contained stories and simple plots. No, this was a comic that demanded my full attention and intellect (such as it was at ten). It wasn't until later on, when I had some money of my own and a comic book store to spend it at, that I was able to collect all of the issues leading up to that one and finally figure out what the hell was going on in that one book that had grabbed my attention.
I still have that comic. It sits in a Mylar bag, compulsively organized and catalogued along with hundreds of others. My brother seems to have been more partial to DC Comics Titles, where I have maintained a fascination with the X-Men series and Marvel comics in general. Between us we have thousands. He has many more, having parlayed his love of comics into a career. But, despite all of the various titles and issues that I have bought and read and loved over the years, that issue is special.
You always remember your first.
The good things about the place was that it was right on the lake, had a sandy beach running a far as a 10 year old could walk in either direction, and there were usually a bunch of other kids around to hang out with. The bad things were that there were only two bedrooms for four people, there was no shower, and there was no cable. The bedroom issue was addressed by having my younger brother share the bed with my mother while I slept on a tiny roll away cot in the room with my grandmother; I guess we deferred to her age by giving her a bed to herself. The shower situation was not so much of an issue for a kid. Two weeks away from the rigours of personal hygiene was fine for my brother and I, but my mother and grandma would inevitably drag us a mile down the road to the state park where we would sneak into the public shower houses to scrub up well enough to last a day or two. As for the cable, well, there was no help for that. For those two weeks my brother and I, kids who had never known life with less than fifty channels, were seemingly thrust backwards in time to the days of the three national networks and PBS. But that was fine, after a day or two we got used to the idea of limited television.
Overall it was the kind of vacation spot where a kid was left to be a kid. It was miles from town, miles from the closest convenience store, and miles away from any of the things that conspired to make life complicated for the awkward, unpopular, ten year old that I was at home. My brother and I would swim, play in the woods, try to catch chipmunks in hastily rigged traps that would make Wiley Coyote wince, spend endless hours redirecting the flow of a small ice cold spring that ran into the lake next to the cabin, and try our level best not to kill each other arguing about all the previously mentioned things. My mom would sit on the beach and read cheap romance novels. My grandmother would knit or cross stitch. We would all take it easy and enjoy the sun.
The problems came with the rain. There was absolutely nothing to do in that tiny cabin, so we would load into the car, at this point spattered with sap from the pine trees that surrounded the place, and head into Grayling to shop. To be truthful, shopping is not a an accurate description of what we would do. There really weren't any stores to speak of. Grayling is not really a resort town, or at least is was not back then; I couldn't say how it is now. It had, as far as I remember, a grocery store, a Ben Franklin (sort of a craft/discount/general store) a K-Mart, and a Big Boy restaurant. Maybe a McDonald's; I can't recall for sure. Sometimes we would take a little longer drive and head to Houghton Lake where there was a huge craft store. Mostly though, we trekked into Grayling for groceries, dinner out and for something to do in the rain.
It was on one of these trips to the grocery store that I bought my first comic book. Breaking away from my mom and grandmother, I wandered over to the magazine rack to look at the comics. At this point in my life I may have had a few comics to my name; Batman and Superman were as familiar to me as any other kid. But I can't really recall ever picking one out for myself before this point. As I scanned the jumbled rack of Ladies Home Journals, Better Homes and Gardens, and People magazines I finally came to the small selection of comics presumably placed there to keep unruly out of town kids like myself from tearing up and down the aisles of the store. The comic that grabbed my attention was Uncanny X-Men #251. I remember this because I am a nerd, but I also remember this because of the cover; a drawing of Wolverine, crucified on a giant X, atop a mountain of skulls. Maybe it was the quality of the artwork. Maybe it was how different it was from the tame, kid friendly comics which were all I had ever seen up until then. Maybe it was the way that the drawing of a crucified superhero clashed with the Catholic imagery I had always been told was sacred. Whatever it was, I had to have that comic.
I really don't know how I managed to convince my mom to buy it for me. She is perplexed by comics and superheros today, and this is after my brother and I have spent the last twenty years stuffing every spare inch of her house with comics, action figures, sci-fi novels, and all other sorts of nerdy paraphernalia. However I did it, and it most likely involved whining and subtle threats of a mid-market meltdown, I left the store with the comic book and a new obsession that would stick with me well into adulthood. I spent the rest of the day reading and re-reading its multi-paneled pages trying to figure out just what in the hell was going on. It wasn't like the kidcentric Batman and Superman books I had read in the past; with their self contained stories and simple plots. No, this was a comic that demanded my full attention and intellect (such as it was at ten). It wasn't until later on, when I had some money of my own and a comic book store to spend it at, that I was able to collect all of the issues leading up to that one and finally figure out what the hell was going on in that one book that had grabbed my attention.
I still have that comic. It sits in a Mylar bag, compulsively organized and catalogued along with hundreds of others. My brother seems to have been more partial to DC Comics Titles, where I have maintained a fascination with the X-Men series and Marvel comics in general. Between us we have thousands. He has many more, having parlayed his love of comics into a career. But, despite all of the various titles and issues that I have bought and read and loved over the years, that issue is special.
You always remember your first.
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