This is the second of the essays from class. We were assigned various essay styles "On…." , list, research (on a nature topic). This is the list one. It's not really complete because it should now include a geek as dad section.
Evolution
Stage 1: Denial
I was born and raised to be what I look like: a high school football coach. That's not entirely true, but close enough for now. I was as athletic as a little boy can be. I rode my bike, played sand lot baseball and tackle football in the back yard, and did cannon balls off of the high dive after swim practice. (I was pretty good at all of them too.) When I first saw The Empire Strikes back at the age of seven, seeing Yoda made me want to hide under my mom's theater seat. So did seeing E.T. jump out of the stuffed animals.
Stage 2: Incubation
I remember watching the beginning few scenes of each installment of the miniseries Sho Gun before bedtime. I played chess, Monopoly ™ and Risk™ with my dad a lot. Back in the days before all of the great young adult fiction that's out there now, tweens who liked to read and had a pretty good imagination were handed The Hobbit. If we liked The Hobbit, which I did, we were handed the Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time and it's sequels, and of course The Lord of the Rings. Most of my friends weren't into Tolkein, but we all watched G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe cartoons after school; kept playing every sport we knew of or could make up and dug massive canals in our mothers' gardens. At this point I was still really trying to fit in. Looking back, this was the beginning of the addiction.
Stage 3: Denial part 2
Junior high. Really do I need to say more? Those of you who have guessed my secret know the difficulties I faced fitting in. At least I played football and basketball on the school teams. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were popular; I just didn't let on that I knew about them from the comic books. My reading list expanded some. I finally read The Silmarillion. I realized at this point that I wasn't just a jock.
Stage 4: Transition
No one ever really stops caring entirely what other people think. Some of us just begin to embrace other people thinking of us as weird. New discoveries in high school included Celtic folk music, H.P Lovecraft, Stanley Kubrik movies, and Dungeons and Dragons. I still played sports and had dates to the Prom both years. At some point around my senior year of high school I made the switch. I decided that even if deep down inside I wanted to be popular I really wanted to be popular with people who liked the me that knew Cthuthlu, Rocky Horror and Bruce Campbell. This was the true beginning of what I am today
Stage 5: Full blown geekdom
I am a geek. I went to a college famed for its non-conformists so I know of what I speak. I am a 32-year-old man, with a wife and baby who still plays role-playing games at least once a month. We've gone beyond D&D and I have at least 10 different games or game systems on my shelf. I visit geeky web sites devoted to games and gaming and post on their message boards. I read geeky magazines and comics dedicated to games and gamers. When someone calls himself a gamer my first thought is dice not video game controllers. I have more dice with more than six sides than most people have of the traditional kind and while I have enough I could never have too many. I have action figures, trading cards, little cardboard ships, and miniature monsters scattered around my office. On my desk in front of me right now are a couple of gaming source books, some old character record sheets and the game plan for tomorrow night's game because like I said, I'm the geekiest high school football coach you've ever met.
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