Rejoice!

The last time all y’all (see, I am becoming a Nova Scotian) came by to chat, I was lamenting the fact that I hadn’t been able to convert my two jedi in training over to the dark side completely.  While they loved video games, superheroes and general geekiness, I hadn’t been able to get them to try a sit down role-playing game with me.  That is no longer a bar to their conversion!

When my fantastic partner and I were in Fredericton to watch the amazing spoken word artist / storyteller / poet / shaman / inspiration Shayne Koyzcan (and that’s a whole other story – that man is awe inspiring) we stopped into a little store called The Geek Chic Boutique. Yeah, the name alone was enough to bring me in, and their selection was interesting enough that childlike squees fluttered about the store faster than I could contain them. We passed over the Star Wars t-shirts, the mad scientist kits, Minecraft figures, Pokemon plushies (which were adorable) and the assorted coffee mugs, Doctor Who equipment and Deadpool wallets, because we found a little game called Adventure Maximus. It was designed by a gamer who wanted to find a way to play with his kids too – to bring them into the fold as it were.  So I could relate, in a big way.

Reading over the rules when we got it open, I was a bit dubious at first, and the kids were confused when we started, but once they got rolling, we had a blast. The padawan gloried over the chance to become Kronk, a hulking minotaur thug with a bad attitude and a penchant for fried pork.  The youngling was pleased as punch to pretend to be a scaled dragonkin priest, breathing fire and smiting his enemies (and allies) with equal zeal.  Even their mother joined in, with her morose goblin warrior.

We’ve had a tonne of fun playing this streamlined and very easy to understand game.  It’s whimsical enough to appeal to the seven year old youngling, interesting enough to keep his ten year old brother entertained, and simple enough that you can play through a whole adventure in an hour or two.  They fight, they dance, they loot, they laugh.  And they let me be the Adventure Master.

Lead and They Might Follow

Until you have uttered the phrase “take that out of your mouth” one hundred times, until you have memorized (and hum in your sleep) the theme song from at least three children’s shows and until you realize you are watching Sponge Bob Squarepants with no children in the room, you will not really understand what I’m talking about here… I hope you read on anyway.

Being a father is the single most rewarding, demanding, painful, thankless, seemingly hopeless and awesome task I have ever undertaken.  My two little Jedi have consistently challenged me, driven me to new heights of frustration (“Stop hitting your brother with dirty underwear!!!”), enraged me to the point where “dad needs some alone time” (as noted by the Padawan last night, and reminded me of the awe that the world once inspired in me. I can’t remember being as excited as my boys are about the new discoveries they make, about the new things they learn – though I am sure I once was.  What I can remember, and it’s easy because it happens daily, is how excited I get watching them have fun, watching them become young men.  Those moments of sheer joy are when our ‘parental batteries’ recharge, oftentimes to overflowing – like Iron Man hit with Thor’s lightning.

Which brings me to my point – my boys are geeks.  They denied it last night when we were discussing it at the dinner table, but when asked to name blasters from Star Wars, they were able to identify several by model number, and held opinions on which one is best for which type of battle.  When questioned about Minecraft, they can go on for hours about the types of buildings they can make, how to use redstone and how to best defeat the deadly creepers. They let me join them in this geekery (though I earned my geek card decades ago) and I revel in the fact that they are so proud of it, and are so happy when I join in – the Youngling was telling all his classmates about how he and I joined together to “defeat an Enderman with only stone swords!” His classmates were suitably impressed.

Both continue to profess their desire to become engineers, the elder to build robots which he can use to take over the world and cleanse it of the humans causing all the problems (the dark side is strong in this one) and the younger to build cars and planes that fly and don’t cause pollution (which he admittedly copied from his brother) or maybe a doctor (possibly one that moonlights as an exotic dancer… yeah, he’s complicated).  We live in a time where their desires to be professional YouTubers (another stated goal for both of them) may actually be a career option. In each of them, their love of technology is helping to guide them on their respective paths.

Both are learning to love reading, with the Padawan leaning toward robots and science fiction graphic novels, and the Youngling digging deep into spooky ‘Goosebumps’ books and stories about haunted houses. I keep hoping they will share my passion for high fantasy, and while both love the Hobbit movies (to my chagrin – damn you Peter Jackson!!!) and the Harry Potter movies, neither is interested in the real treat that is a high fantasy novel… but I wait patiently for them.

When asked if he would like to play a roleplaying game with me last night, the Padawan declined – it didn’t sound like fun to him.  I was saddened a bit, the final indoctrination into my geek realm can’t happen until he rolls some polyhedral dice and knows the agony of the critical failure and the ecstasy of rolling a natural twenty.  I want to share that passion with him, but it seems I will have to wait a bit longer yet. 

Above all I’m glad that ‘geek’ no longer has negative connotations, or at least not as negative as they once were.  Where an interest or passion for computers, science fiction or fantasy used to be a one way ticket to social pariah status, it can now be a badge of honor.  And my Jedi in training are many kinds of geeks: video game geeks, technology geeks, superhero geeks, Nerf geeks, Roughrider football geeks, judo geeks and Star Wars geeks.  They are my geeks.

You spin me right round baby, right round...

Here in Halifax, we recently decided - wait... "we" in this case means the elected officials of our fair city, and "recently" means two years ago (we Haligonians consider anything that happened after the 1917 Halifax Explosion to be recent) - to make the temporary skating oval that was designed for the 2011 Canada Games into a permanent winter fixture.  Tubing and cooling equipment, far to complicated to go into great detail on here (and because I don't have the faintest idea how it works, I think it uses science), make the Oval usable even in slightly above zero weather, which is good, because Halifax "winters" are rarely consistent.

The nicest part about the Oval is that it was kept alive due to the public response to it.  You see, when it was originally constructed back in 2011 for that year's Canada Games, it was left open for public skating for the rest of that winter season, but was due to be dismantled and turned back into the vacant park field that it came from.  But the public responded so positively to its existence, and put so much pressure on HRM's city council, that it was decided to keep it open, and even to slowly upgrade it.

The other nicest part about the Oval is that the city has managed, so far, to keep it free to use.  Despite the assuredly high costs of running it every year, it is free for anyone to head out and skate upon.  It is maintained, and kept in very good shape, throughout its open period by tax dollars and corporate sponsorship (note the name after all, our power company hard at work spending its obscene profits).  So anyone with a pair of skates (and a CSA approved hockey helmet if you are under 12 years of age) can head on down and skate at will (during public skates times of course).

But wait!  The other nicest part about the Oval is that if you don't own those aforementioned skates and helmet (see, I used aforementioned in a sentence, that law degree is totally worth the $40K I paid!), then they will lend you a pair of skates and / or the helmet you need.  Just turn over a piece of government issued picture ID, and the very efficient staff members will get you the gear you need - for free!  And they do it quickly too - a line of about sixty people can be processed in as little ten minutes.

OK, the last nicest part about the Oval though is the sense of community that it inspires.  There is a real sense of small town community, an almost Rockwellian vision.  People are all there to skate and to be part of the larger Halifax community - they help each other up, there are few collisions (and being Canadian, more apologies than strictly necessary), people look out for each other and each other's kids.

But the real nicest part about the Oval is that it gave me the chance to take my boys skating for the very first time today.  They had a blast.  The first lap took about thirty minutes, and Doc wiped out about forty times.  But he kept getting up, kept trying.  Even when I could see he was getting frustrated, he didn't throw in the towel.  Gee on the other hand, rarely fell, due in part to his very low center of gravity, but even more to the bob-skates he was wearing.

Both boys had the time of their lives, red cheeked and covered in snow.  They laughed and grinned with each fall, and Gee made a point of trying to get as far ahead of me as he could.  Doc just kept going, and he swears that many of his falls were not due to trying to impress the pretty girls.  I suppose their proximity was just a coincidence, twenty six times.  What?  It could totally happen.

I had the best day I have had in a really long time (and that is out of some pretty damned good days!) watching them, coaching them, and just being their dad.

Thanks for taking me skating boys.  We'll do it again, very soon.

NaNoWriMo

I decided, somewhat on a whim, yesterday that I would try to do the National Novel Writing Month experiment once more.  Last year was a success - well, I completed the task of writing 50,000 words in the month of November - and I am confident that I can make it two in a row by doing the same this year.

Writing, as of late, has really fallen by the wayside.  I have no idea why.  Writing relaxes me, lets me get rid of stress and gives my creativity the outlet that I so desperately crave.  I love watching my characters come to life on the screen, and can't wait to see what they are going to get up to next.  An hour of writing is probably the best hour I will spend in any given day.  Yet, for some odd reason, I find myself finding excuses all the time not to write.

It is probably the simple fact that, as enjoyable as it is, writing is work.  Hard work.  A good writing session leaves me tired, just like a good work out session.  And a great marathon session of writing, where the words just flow out onto the screen as fast as my thick fingers can kit the keys, leaves me exhausted.  But, like a good workout (or good sex), it is a good kind of exhaustion, the kind where you have that afterglow of endorphin fueled euphoria.

So why don't I write more?  I have no idea.  But I am working on it.

Long story short, I am writing like crazy this month, so if I don't respond to your email or telephone call, I'll get back to you later.  Maybe in December.  See you then.

A Good Laugh

A good laugh can solve so many of life's issues.  I woke up in a foul mood, after falling asleep in an equally foul one.  Then I found this - if you have ever owned a dog, you'll get them.

Just a little something to brighten your Monday morning.

Where Will It Take Us?

A long time ago I suggested that we all Try Having a Little Fun Sometime, that we can all make something fun simply by making a game out of it – that you can take the ordinary and everyday tasks of your life, add a little zest, a dash of whimsy, a half an ounce of excitement and whammo!, you have a game again rather than a boring task to complete.

I acquired an iPhone a while ago, much to my personal glee.  I am officially an Apple fan, with five apple products in the house now – though I blame my father for at least three and maybe four of them, he’s a bad influence.  The iPhone is far more portable than my iPad, and I love that it is now my defacto camera for random shots, my phone, bus route checker and music player.  One of the apps that I grabbed, and one that I had been eagerly awaiting, is Zombies, Run!  This app is exactly what I was thinking of when I wrote that old post – a little bit of fun that encourages us to get out and do something sort of humdrum again.  The premise is pretty straightforward, you run while listening to your music, and it tells you a story as you do – a story which you are a part of as 'Runner Five'.  It’s a blast. I’ve had it for two days and have already put an extra 7.5 kms onto my sneakers.  Now that doesn’t seem like much at all to most runners, but for me those are huge numbers – I would have spent that hour and a half sitting on my butt watching movies and eating chips.  Instead I was out running (well, walking mostly, but at a fast pace, with occasional bursts of panicked speed) and enjoying it.  Maybe it was the thought of leveling up (which you do, sort of), maybe the thought of increasing the size of my virtual zombie free base, maybe just the idea that I was actually playing a zombie game.  But the why doesn’t really matter – the fact remains that I was out getting some great exercise in fresh air, and I was loving it.  And I hate running, always have.  But I had a blast two days in a row, and I am looking forward to my run tomorrow.

My enjoyment of this app, and by extension my iPhone, demonstrates something that I have been spending a lot of time thinking about lately – the role of technology in making our lives better.  I am not just talking about the fleeting enjoyment of life that games and the like can bring – though computer games are a blast.  I am talking about the way in which technology has improved the lives of millions of people (some more than others of course) through connecting people across vast distances.  The way that the blind can see (sure, its rudimentary now, but it won’t be long until we have visual prosthetics) though technology.  The way that the deaf can participate fully in a conversation with a group of people via an iPad app.  The way that we can communicate (often badly) in ways that we have never had access to before, and the way that we can connect with each other in ways that were unheard of a decade ago.

The internet has changed the way we relate to each other as people.  It brings out the worst in people sometimes, but it unites people in a way that nothing else ever has.  The success of some recent upheavals in the Middle East have been largely credited to the average citizen’s ability to communicate quickly and easily through things like Facebook and using smart phones.  The Occupy movement was (is?) largely possible due to its members ability to stay connected with each other.  The mis-steps (probably too light a word, but I am not here to rant about that today) of law enforcement officers is coming to light, and being proven, because of smart phone cameras.  If Google has its way (and it usually does) we’ll soon be able to let the cars do the driving, which will save millions of lives – 93% of all accidents are directly attributable to human error.  Medical technologies are moving faster than we can track them.  A NASA scientist has patented a carbon nanotube containing a tiny pharmacy with the capability to detect when and what is needed and administer the appropriate substance – all in a device no larger than a pencil lead whose insertion into the human body will be a ten minute procedure at your doctor’s office.  3D printers are already “printing” human organs, and the development of techno-organic materials the human body is capable of using without any chance of rejection is proceeding at an incredible pace.  This will one day eliminate the need for a donor for many (all?) organs for those who need this life saving surgery.

But none of that is why I came here tonight.  No, tonight I came here to tell you that the phrase “I shit my pants and run away” (a phrase my group of friends here in Halifax loves to remember for reasons which are too lengthy to go into here) has taken on a new meaning.  Tonight, running along a deserted stretch of Nova Scotia highway and playing Zombies, Run! I got a hell of a cardio work out.  Not directly because of the running, but rather on account of the game itself, and its collusion with Mother Nature.

As I crested a slight rise, the game cut in, with my guide yelling out “Damn, where did they come from?  I’ve never seen them move that fast, run, RUN!”.  At that exact moment, a deer jumped out of the brush at the side of the road.  I shit my pants and ran away.

Try Having a Little Fun Sometime 2/30

A good friend of mine posted a great video on her Facebook today (handy little thing that Facebook).  Here's a link to the video.

I have discovered I don’t like actually putting video clips in here - it messes up the scrolling and formatting just a tad too much.  Yeah, I actually am that anal.  So go watch that video.  It is only about a minute and a half long.  I’ll wait.

Back?  Hello?  Hmmm…

Ah!  There you are.  So, great video huh?  Not a bad idea really.  Take a mundane and boring task, like climbing stairs, add in an element of fun, and suddenly people are doing something they used to hate and laughing while they do it.

Does it work in reality?  Sure, the novelty of making music as you walk up the stairs would keep you climbing them for a while, but how long would you really do it?  I hate to say it, but I rather doubt that you would keep it up too long at all.  And you know why?  Because you are an adult.  At least chronologically.  And that is a shame.

You want to watch people having fun doing things that we consider boring?  Find a child under the age of ten.

One of my first blog posts, entitled “Playing Shovels”, was about the fun that Noah and I have shoveling the driveways of our home.  Hard, backbreaking work that very few people enjoy.  One of those oddballs who does so is my son.  He loves shoveling it, laughs madly while tossing snow, and gets sad when the rain washes it away before he can shovel it.  He’s pleasantly insane, and when I’m with him, sometimes so am I.

Tonight, to test this “fun theory”, and knowing that Noah was one for games and fun, I tried something new when it was time for the boys to do their evening cleanup.  I made it a race.  And Noah, rather than his usual disgruntled compliance, jumped at the chance.  He cheered when he “won” and teased his brother that he would win again tomorrow.  He probably will, Griff didn’t want to play the game and hates cleaning up.

Anyone that has kids can probably relate to this amazing capacity for fun that kids seem to have.   Go to any beach when the water is cold and look at who is in the water - children.  Dozens of them, teeth chattering, fingernails purple and lips blue.  You can see the lips from quite a distance, because they are all smiling and laughing.  Their parents?  Huddled on the beach after putting one toe into the water and declaring “No way!” 

Children find enjoyment in the strangest places and the smallest things.  Hell, banging loudly on a roasting pan can keep Griffin occupied for hours (yes, we spend a lot on Tylenol here), and give Noah a flashlight to play with and he’ll be exploring dark “caves” for days.

I think the real transition from childhood to adulthood is the first time a child utters the words “I’m bored.”

When and why do we lose this ability to be fascinated and entertained by the world around us?  Why do we come to believe we need xbox and iPod and HDTV and thousands of dollars worth of computer hardware to have fun?  When do we stop looking at a refrigerator box as a source of amusement and start seeing it as a nuisance to fold up and take out to the trash?

The when, while academically interesting, is really the secondary question there though.  The why is far more important.  What is it about adults that leads us to be less adventurous, less daring and less able to entertain ourselves?  Is it the knowledge that we’re mortal?  Is it the years of experience in getting hurt that makes us shy to take chances?  Those are likely factors to explain why we avoid the more risky behaviours we might once have engaged in, but they don’t explain why we lose the ability to make everyday things fun.

And when we do these things, when we drive down the street making race car sounds, or fart in the tub just to see the bubbles, we laugh.  Unless another adult sees us, then we blush and stammer and try to change the subject.  Newsflash folks, race car sounds are cool, no matter your age, and farts are funny.  Especially when they make bubbles in the tub.  Most especially when those bubbles are purple.  What????

We’re told all through our late childhood and early adolescence to “grow up” to “stop acting silly” and to “be a big boy / girl”.  Society wants us to be sober, hard-working, reliable, blah blah blah… boring people.  Yet we all have that friend that doesn’t fit the mold.  You know the one I am talking about.  He plays in a jazz band.  She lived in a yurt in Mongolia for a year.  She dropped out of law school to be a street performer in Montreal.  He is a circus performer.  She lived out of her backpack for two years travelling through South America.  We secretly, and sometimes not so secretly, want to be these people.  We dream of what it would be like to do these “crazy” things, to be able and willing to put our dreams and our fun ahead of what society tells us we are supposed to do.  But we have mortgages, families, car payments and pensions to think about.  So we dream and we wonder.

Here’s the thing.  And this is what I thought about when I saw that video.  We can still have fun.  We can still laugh at our farts.  We can giggle like idiots and not feel embarrassed when a stranger on the bus sees us.  We can jump into that icy water and splash each other.  We can remember what it was like to be a child, to face the world with wild abandon and take joy in the mundane – we just have to try a little harder.

Now some of you are thinking “But I already do that stuff!  I have fun all the time!”  Bully for you.  Now go back to the beginning of this, read it again.  If you can still say that it doesn’t apply to you, you’re a damned lucky person and I envy you.  Please tell me how you do it.

For the rest of us, here’s our challenge for the week.  Do something outrageous, something childlike and fun.  Don’t do it because I said it would be a hoot.  Don’t do it to prove you can.. Do it because your soul needs to be reminded it’s alive and well.