It was mid-December when my wife and I noticed that things were going missing around the house. Milk, olives, and even toilet paper had vanished. We weren’t without clues about the identity of the thief. A pair of size ten riot boots, a mountain of laundry that resembled a quarter-scale model of K2, and the gentle sound of midday snoring from the guest room all pointed to a teenage culprit.
Our youngest, fresh from the first semester of his freshman year had abandoned the wild life in the engineering dorm and descended on us like a long-term house guest. Having to negotiate a new adult-child to adult-parent relationship was just a bonus.
It wasn’t as if we hadn’t already had some practice. Our oldest son moved out a couple of years ago and has returned home from time-to-time for visits ranging from a few hours to a few weeks. When he moved out, I was the Alpha Geek; the guy with the inside track on the hipness of the internet, gaming, tech, and sci-fi. Except, when my son came back, our conversations started to sound like sitcoms with me cast in the role of clueless dad.
“You know that cat that wants a cheeseburger?” I asked. “Did you know there are a lot of funny pictures like that?
“You mean the LOL Cats?”
“Ummmm…. I guess. They sure talk funny.”
“That’s LOL, teh first languages of teh interwebs.”
“Huh?”
“You know, things like ‘I’m in UR garden noming your veg.’”
“What…?” I started to think he was having me on.
“There are funnier things out there though. Do you read OOTS or XKCD?”
“Uh. No?” I guessed. Obviously I was losing my geek-cred. I did the only thing I could do which was to ask him to educate me. In return, he did the only thing he could do which was talk slowly in the same patient tone I used on him when he was about six. It was like the nerd version of The Miracle Worker.
These days we see him about twice a month on weekends and he’s so well plugged in to geek culture it’s like he’s visiting from another planet. He always comes back though, because his apartment doesn’t have a washing machine.
Actually, I need to set the record straight about that. It’s an old joke that kids only return home for food, money or clean laundry. Based on my observation, I can definitively say, once and for all that this is true. Categorically, undeniably, consistently true.
I held this as a theory for two years and confirmed it after our youngest son moved out. Not that we don’t welcome them home when they come. Their visits are always educational.
For example, during the holiday break I learned that I am boring.
I learned this just after dinner at 4:45 p.m. on a Tuesday when my youngest looked at me and said, “Do you have any plans for the evening?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “See anything good on TV.”
From the look of horror on his face you’d think I’d proposed an evening vigorously watching water evaporate or listening to the sound of dust settling on the bookshelves. He proposed a Nerf war and graciously offered to arm me from his extensive arsenal of dart-firing death machines.
At some point in the past twenty years, the good folks at Nerf started hiring their engineers from the “maximum overkill” division of the military-industrial complex. In my childhood, Nerf made a bright orange foam ball and a ball-firing sidearm that looked like a Buck Rogers ray gun made of Habitrail tubes. Modern Nerf armaments are weapons systems that include interchangeable scopes, replaceable clips and (no kidding) a belt-fed machine gun. With their bright, boiled-candy colors, cheerful designs, and devastating rates of fire, getting shot by one of these babies is like being slaughtered by a happy, homicidal clown.
Still, when my kids were younger I’d managed to hold my own in the occasional primitive Nerf battle. How hard could it be to best an eighteen-year-old in single combat?
It was impossible.
I lost.
A lot.
He was faster, stronger, and more ruthless than I expected. The Terminator could have taken tenacity lessons from him. If we’d been using lead instead of foam, there wouldn’t have been enough of me left to bury. The only rest I got was during the mandatory sessions of “Where did that last dart end up?” we played between each round of combat.
After a while he relented and stopped the game on the premise that shooting me was only marginally more interesting than using the front door for target practice.
Since it wasn’t yet six p.m. we opted for a quieter game and settled in for a few hands of Munchkin. Together we killed an hour and single-handedly my son slaughtered me three times. Then he got bored and declared that maybe he would see if there was anything good on TV after all.
So I wasn’t the king of geek coolness nor was I the Nerf champion and my status as the most amateur gamer ever was pretty much guaranteed for life. At least I retained my dignity … for approximately two more days.
You know, video games aren’t as easy as they used to be. For one thing, the graphics are getting smaller and fuzzier. And the levels are getting harder. I guess there’s no shame in admitting I had to have my son help me through a couple of rough spots recently. If it weren’t for him, I’d never have rescued the mermaid in Playmobil Pirates.
The calendar crept up on us and he had to go back to school and I set to work repairing my facade of coolness. It’s only temporary, though. One day the boys will come back to visit and I’ll be middle-aged again.
