by Wil Wheaton
“Thirty-four.”
“Nice job,” he said. I ran this comment through my fifteen-year-old-to-English filter and got “Nice job. [Sincere.]”
“Thank you, Ryan,” I said with a grin.
Behind us, on the other side of the giant American Airlines balloon, about fifty people were Jazzercising. Outrageously loud Europop music assaulted our weary ears, but the Jazzercisers seemed to enjoy it.
I always thought Jazzercise was an improv joke, you know, like “Biggus Dickus.” But it turns out it’s a real thing, and the people doing it were having a really good time. When the music went out (presumably because the girl leading them whooped and blew out the mixer), they kept right on going while she said things like, “Up to the left! Up to the left! And attitude! And attitude! Left! Left! Give me attitude! Attitude!”
Anne, Michelle, and Nolan walked up together.
“I learned something today,” I said.
“What’s that?” Anne asked.
“Jazzercising is all about attitude.”
She sat down next to me.
“How’d you do?” I asked her.
“I totally ran the whole way!” She was the happiest I’d seen her in weeks. She had also been under a lot of stress and pressure, so seeing her smile and relax nearly brought tears to my eyes.
“I’m really proud of you, honey,” I said.
We talked about our times, and I turned to Nolan.
“I loved it that you were cheering for me, Nolan,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said. He was thirteen, and the inevitable day when I’d have to start using the English translator hadn’t yet arrived.
“What was your time?” I asked.
“Twenty-four minutes!” he said.
“Holy crap, Nolan!” I said. “That’s fast!”
“Yeah, it was fun,” he said. “I think I finished pretty close to the top.”
“Gosh, you think?”
The Jazzercise music started up again.
“What the—” Anne started.
“Attitude,” I said, “plus loud Europop, equals Jazzercise.”
We snacked for a few more minutes, picked up our stuff from the gear-check, and headed back to our car. As we crossed the street, thousands of walkers streamed across the bridge and turned into the final stretch. They were a sea of pink shirts, pink hats, pink balloons, pink flags. They were singing and shouting and having a great time.
“Oh my God,” Anne said. “Look at all those people!”
We did.
“We are totally part of that,” I said. “I’m proud of us. All of us.”
a portrait of the artist as a young geek
This is a story about who I am, and why.
December, 1983
I sat on the floor in Aunt Val’s house and opened up her Christmas present to me. It was a red box with a really cool-looking dragon on the front of it. Inside, there were a few books, some dice, a map, and a crayon to color in the dice.
“That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow,” she said. “It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from The Hobbit. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” My brother played with Legos and my cousins played with handheld electronic games. I felt a little ripped off.
“Wow,” I said, masking my disappointment. “Thanks, Aunt Val!”
Later, while the other kids played with Simon and Mattel Electronic Football, I sat near the fireplace and examined my gift. It said that I could be a wizard or a fighter, but there weren’t any pieces that looked like that. There were a lot of weird dice, but I had to color in the numbers. That seemed silly, but at least it was something to do, so I grabbed the black crayon and rubbed it over the pale blue dice, just like the instructions said.
Aunt Val (who was my favorite relative in the world throughout my entire childhood and right up until she died a few years ago) walked into the living room. “What do you think, Willow?”
“I colored the dice,” I said, and showed her the result. “But I haven’t read the book yet.”
She patted my leg. “Well, I hope you like it.” She moved to the other side of the room, where my cousin Jack poked at a Nintendo Game and Watch.
I opened the Player’s Guide and began to read.
February, 1984
It was afternoon PE in fifth grade, and I was terrified. I ran and jumped and ducked, surrounded by a jeering crowd of my classmates. The PE teacher did nothing to stop the attack—and, in fact, encouraged it.
“Get him!” someone yelled as I fell to the asphalt, small rocks digging into my palms. I breathed hard. Through my adrenaline-fueled flight-or-fight response, the world slowed, the jeering faded, and I wondered to myself why our playground was just a parking lot and why we had to wear corduroy pants in the middle of a Southern California heat wave. Before I could offer any answers, a clear and loud voice spoke from within my head. “Hey,” it said. “You’d better get up and move, or you’re dead.”
I nodded my head and looked up in time to see the red playground ball, spinning in slow motion, as the word “Voit” rotated into view. Pain exploded across my face and a mighty cheer erupted from the crowd. The PE teacher blew her whistle.
I don’t know how I managed to be the last kid standing on our team. I usually ran right to the front of the court so I could get knocked out quickly and (hopefully) painlessly before the good players got worked up by the furor of battle and started taking head shots, but I’d been stricken by a bout of temporary insanity—possibly caused by the heat—on this February day, and I’d actually played to win the game, using a very simple strategy: run like hell and hope to get lucky.
I blinked back tears as I looked up at Jimmie Just, who had delivered the fatal blow. Jimmie was the playground bully. He spent as much time in the principal’s office as he did in our classroom, and he was the most feared dodgeball player at the Lutheran School of the Foothills.
He laughed at me, his long hair stuck to his face in sweaty mats, and sneered. “Nice try, Wil the Pill.”
I picked myself up off the ground, determined not to cry. I sucked in deep breaths of air through my nose.
Mrs. Cooper, the PE teacher, walked over to me. “Are you okay, Wil?” she asked.
“Uh-huh,” I lied. Anything more than that and I risked breaking down into humiliating sobs that would follow me around the rest of the school year, and probably on into sixth grade.
“Why don’t you go wash off your face,” she said, not unkindly, “and sit down for a minute.”
“Okay,” I said. I walked slowly across the blacktop to the drinking fountains. Maybe if I really took my time, I could run out the clock and I wouldn’t have to play another stupid dodgeball game.
January, 1984
Papers scattered across my bed appeared to be homework to the casual observer, but to me they were people. A thief, a couple of wizards, some fighters: a party of adventurers who desperately wanted to storm The Keep on the Borderlands. But without anyone to guide them, they sat alone, trapped in the purgatory of my bedroom, straining behind college-ruled blue lines to come to life.
I tried to recruit my younger brother to play with me, but he was 7, and more interested in Monchichi. The kids in my neighborhood were more interested in football and riding bikes, so I was left to read through module B2 by myself, wandering the Caves of Chaos and dodging Lizard Men alone.
February, 1984
I washed my face and drank deeply from the drinking fountain. By the time I made it back to the benches along the playground’s southern edge, I’d lost the urge to cry, but my face radiated enough heat to compete with the blistering La Crescenta sun.
I sat down near Simon Teele, who, thanks to the wonders of alphabetization, ended up with me and Harry Yan (the school’s lone Asian kid) on field trips, on fire drills, and in chapel. Simon was taller than all of us, wore his hair down into his face, and really kept to himself. He was reading an oversi
zed book that sort of looked like a textbook, filled with charts and tables.
We weren’t officially friends, but I knew him well enough to make polite conversation.
“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you have to play dodgeball?”
“Asthma.”
“Lucky,” I said. “I hate dodgeball.”
“Everyone hates dodgeball,” he said, “except Jimmie Just.”
“Yeah.” I was relieved to hear someone else say out loud what I’d been thinking since fourth grade.
“Hey,” I said. “What are you reading?”
He held up the book and I saw its cover: a giant statue, illuminated by torches, sat behind an archway. Two guys were on its head, prying loose one of its jeweled eyes, as a group of people stood at the base. One was clearly a wizard; another was obviously a knight.
“Player’s Handbook,” he said. “Do you play D&D?”
I gasped. According to our ultra-religious school, D&D was Satanic. I looked up for teachers, but none were nearby. A hundred feet away on the playground, another game of dodgeball was underway. I involuntarily flinched when I heard the hollow pang! of the ball as it skipped off the ground.
“You’re going to get in trouble if you get caught with that,” I said.
“No, I won’t,” he said. “If I just keep it turned upside down, they’ll never see it. So do you play or not?”
“I have the red box set and a bunch of characters, but I don’t have anyone to play with.”
“That’s Basic,” he said. “This is Advanced.”
“Oh.”
“But if you want, you could come over to my house this weekend and we could play.”
I couldn’t believe my good luck. With a dodgeball to the face, Fate put me on the bench next to the kid who, over the next few months, helped me take my first tentative steps down the path to geekdom. He had a ton of AD&D books: the Dungeon Master’s Guide, which had a truly terrifying demon on the cover, and would result in certain expulsion if seen at school; the Monster Manual, which was filled with dragons; and the Fiend Folio, which not only had demons and devils, but a harpy and a nymph, accompanied by a drawing of a naked woman! With boobs!!
Simon’s parents were divorced, and he lived with his mom in a huge house in La Canada. His room was filled with evidence of a custody Cold War. Too many toys to count littered the floor and spilled out of the closet, but even though we were surrounded by Atari and Intellivision, GI Joe and Transformers, we had D&D fever, and the only prescription was more polyhedral dice.
Though it was just the two of us playing, we stormed the Keep on the Borderlands and explored the Isle of Dread. We spent all our free time at school making new characters, designing dungeons, and unsuccessfully attempting to recruit other kids to play with us.
March, 1984
My babysitter Gina’s older brother was an experienced Dungeon Master, and he let us play in one of his custom-made dungeons. My fighter walked into a room, got trapped behind a portcullis, and died when I sprang a trap trying to escape. Simon and I decided later that it would be okay to resurrect him for our own adventures without penalty, because Gina’s brother’s dungeon was really too hard, and it wasn’t part of our world, anyway.
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 m
any 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…
