I've been thinking about my grandchild, who is due in 9-10 weeks. We do not know if it is a boy or a girl, my daughter and her husband agreed not to be told. We live very close to one another, and we are close, so no doubt the child will spend a lot of time with us ... and that will undoubtedly mean the child will grow up watching me work on my computer, and ask, "What are you doing, grandpa?"
To which I'll answer, "I'm writing." And the child will ask, "About what?" And I'll probably answer, "D&D," assuming I'm not writing about something else at the time. And as the child grows up, he or she will get used to me sitting her and writing, knowing that if he or she wants attention, they can come sit on my lap or pull my wrist to get me away from the computer, just like my daughter did 28 years ago. I don't mind taking breaks, see.
And as I eek into my 60s, and the child eeks into his or her precocious years, they'll start to become conscious and learn to read, and the subject of my playing D&D with come around. And ten years from now, as I'm still figuring out what I want to do with this blog, being 66, and the child rolls into his or her tweens, they'll start to read me. They may even one day read this post. They'll learn to play the way my daughter has, and the way I think is right ... and then the poor child will unfortunately visit some other group of gamers and discover what a horrible, crappy version of D&D that everyone else plays.
It should be understood. If you grow up and watch your father get drunk every night, as my mother did, that makes you believe things about being an adult. If you grow up and watch and watch your father build an enormous cabin from the ground up with his two hands, as I did, it gets into your head and you begin to think you can build big things too. And if you watch your father spend day and night pounding keys, laser focused on something that matters to him, as my daughter did, this makes you think that focus and work is a good thing. Well over half of parenting is what you do every day. If that's going off somewhere else, disappearing, to a place that your child never fully understands because you hate your job and you don't like to talk about it, that child is going to grow up with a skewed, corrupted idea of what work is, no matter how many times you make the child eat their peas or sit up straight, or stop swearing. My daughter never "rebelled" against me, because I was always on her side; something she always knew. That mattered a lot more than policing her bedtime.
My daughter grew up looking at my back, as I sat in a corner with a computer in front of me. If she hadn't been able to come over and grab me, and pull me away, that would have been a terrible childhood for her. But though she could pull me away, she began to understand as she got into her tweens that what I was doing really mattered to me; and because of that she also understood why it was fine to just let me keep working. She wanted that; because she began to understand that she had things to do as well, and that having those things to do mattered to her.
If you think it's terrible that I'm a monster online, who seems as though he has to be right all the time, who snaps back at people who disagree with him -- the same people who should know by now that I buy ink by the barrel and that I don't do things casually -- then imagine what the intensity looks like to a 4-year-old. I cannot possibly be the monster that some people online imagine that I am ... else my daughter would be a monster too. It should be evident to anyone who's heard her speak that she isn't.
I'm dedicated. I'm in love with my work. If I seem to be an asshole half the time, it is in part because I think about this work constantly, and study it constantly, whereas most of my critics don't. If I seem to be crazy, it is because I'm focused. Children recognize this instinctively. Children like taking things seriously. It is adults who want to make everything frivolous and silly, because they've learned to equate "serious" with their hated jobs. Children have nothing to compensate for; when they play at anything, they play so seriously it hurts. That's what we all used to do when we cared about things.
What happened to so many of us?
The more serious I am, the more seriously my grandchild will see what I do. And the more seriously he or she will treat this game, once they come to know it. More's the pity, because while he or she comes to take the game seriously, the more certain it will be that he or she will butt heads against those who don't. I'm raised someone just like me; I'm being given an opportunity to contribute to doing it again.
Get ready. In 20 years, having been raised around my daughter, my son-in-law and me, you people out here in the internet should be worried. You think I'm a tyrant.
Just get ready.
: )
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