Friday, June 03, 2005
My brother and I would pool our allowance and go to Waldenbooks in the mall to buy some bitchin' D&D modules. I purchased a coveted 20-sided die (watch me roll for dexterity now, bitch!) One day my dad caught us playing in my brother's room. Seeing an opportunity to get more involved in his kids life (as his wife was always nagging him to do) and being able to do so while incorporating what he excelled at(warfare), he volunteered to be our GM and run our new campaign. At first, it was AWESOME, but it quickly turned sour and got weird, like most everything my dad gets involved in. One Saturday, when we were stoked about getting to raid the warlock's castle, we approached our Dad for D&D time, only to find him outside in the backyard with garbage bags, plywood planks, twine, electrical tape, and gunpowder. My brother and I looked at each other in fear.
Apparently, gaming wasn't enough for Dad. He wanted to enter the arena of live action roleplaying.
So we spent the next hour fashioning costumes out of garbage bags and electrical tape and fashioning weapons out of twigs, plywood, electrical tape, and rocks. My brother was a warrior and had a plywood sword, and I was a druid with a bow I made out of a long stick and some twine. My mom wandered out of the house, stood agape for a few minutes, and wandered back inside, shaking her head and muttering "somebody's gonna get murdered in the yard, somebody's gonna call the cops on us again...I can't take these kids in public anymore already and look what he's doing now..."
Despite my mom's obvious irritation and shame, my dad proceeded to have my brother and I act out our D&D game in the front yard. I reminded my dad that our neighbors might not understand why my father was in the frontyard with a broadsword, in his flip flops and Hawaiian shirt with a garbage bag over his shirt and wearing a Burger King crown. He told me to mind my own business and get to slaying ogres before they breached the castle wall.
Then of course, I see one of our neighbors, a nosy elderly lady, driving down the road in her Buick. I see her slow to a crawl and lean across the passenger seat to stare at us. Not watching what she's doing, she runs a little into the ditch in front of our mailbox and stops cold, staring at us in disbelief. My dad looks at us and shouts "Warriors, attach the invading hag!" and runs down the driveway toward her. My brother and I froze. She hit the gas and hightailed it out of there. My mom comes out after hearing the screeching tires and asks us "Did someone finally call the cops on ya'll? Oh, it was just Miss Mary...Dammit!" and retreated to the (relative) safety of the house.
So after this incident and after a very, very heated argument between my parents, it was decided we would abandon D&D for the new 007 role playing game - which, per my mother's strict orders, would be played indoors with no homemade weapons, gunpowder, or 20 sided dice. She figured if this one made it to the front yard there was no way we could make an Aston Martin out of plywood, and our neighbors already knew we played with guns so they wouldn't be surprised.
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