A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
- Thomas Jefferson
So let us recap. In part one of the series I described how my world existed of suffering. In part two of the series I confessed of my desire to end my suffering and wish to bring back my grandfathers spirit of kindness and understanding. I ended the post saying what got me through the turmoil was embracing my vindictive power, and using my ego to manage its focus. I debated with a former mentor and friends about courage after the blog post. My former mentor felt people need to be more courageous to act when situations arise. I feel that I don’t have courage, and never did anything to warrant ever being called courageous. What I do instead of trying to be courageous is practice at not being a coward by being honest with my feelings and thoughts. In a world filled with pessimist, becoming a coward can easily happen. When it happens to me, it is usually because I have fell into a trap within my minds dungeon. Finding my way out means I have to retrace my steps that got me in the situation, and sometimes I have to defeat the monsters that represent my fears. I admire those who have the fortitude and intelligence to do it alone, but sometimes think constantly surviving on your own leads to paranoia and an unhealthy ego in the form of narcissism. I guess that is the root of my own personal demons that you are about to read about. Growing up as a only child in the rough neighborhoods of suburbia isn’t always easy when you are younger and different from the others. My experience of socialization outside of my family growing up is filled with lots of dysfunction. What helped me survive this long is my friends, family, and love ones compassion. A few can do it alone, but for the majority of us we look for a partner and groups in life to give us strength, to encourage us when we feel we can’t go on, and in many cases be the soft place to fall when we need rest from the stress fighting the good fight brings.
High School began for me in band camp. Before I hit the Halls of the great Perry as a lost freshman, I was initiated in the largest marching band in Maryland. My mind and body were shaped into a disciplined music machine ready to be unleashed, once I managed to eat my portion of the gator meat. I continued the legacy my mother started long ago when she was a member of the first graduation class of Perry Hall. I was accepted not because of my social status, number of friends or who I knew, but because I was a competent musician at that time and fortunately lived in an area with a great music program . Come to find out though, music and being anonymous in a large group wasn’t my path in life.
When the school year began I was looking forward to joining one of the clubs I heard about in middle school. The Dungeons and Dragons club. A few years earlier I went on a trip with my adoptive father to San Francisco to visit his mother. I would stay with my cousins when my father and Aunt would go site seeing. My one cousin told stories of her playing this game “D&D” with friends. I asked her if we could play, but there never seem to be a time to sit down and learn. I played a number of Atari games growing up, and one of my favorites was Adventure. I always imagined myself as a thief clad in armor and sword when playing that basic graphical game. In the game you were represented as a rectangular dot, and your sword was an arrow looking thing. The dragons looked like these weird ducks. The stories my cousin told of playing D&D were much more glamorous and detailed though. When I arrived home, I managed to convince my parents to buy the “Basic Dungeons and Dragon” set. I poured over the rule book and adventure that was included with such focus that eventually it would help overcome some reading difficulties I was having. Throughout middle school, when I wasn’t doing school work, I would talk, play, and obsess about playing D&D. As I got more proficient, my friends and I graduated up to the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons edition. AD&D had a lot more rules for mundane things like encumbrance, and monster reactions, but it also offered more adventure class types, deadlier monsters, and more importantly awesome treasure . All these new rules made it a lot more complicated to master the game. (Note if you want to see a great example, the show Community did an episode that was spot on. )
My first day in the AD&D club in school was rather fortuitous. It was there that I would meet my best friend. Prior to that encounter, my best friend Tommy was still in middle school. Tommy and I met in little league and went to church, elementary, and middle school together. I felt it was destine that we would be friends because we shared the same birthday, just a year apart. Even though Tommy was younger than me, he was bigger and way more cooler than I ever would be. He played D&D too, but just privately. Tom didn’t like people knowing he was a geek at heart. He would draw pictures of our adventures all the time. Subconsciously I wonder if Tommy was the one who influenced me to major in art in college. Tommy was a natural artist, athlete, and politician. I was one of the few kids that could play catcher for his fastball, and being the older of the two, I would lead Tommy on a lot of adventures. I swore that I would remain loyal to Tommy as I entered high school but by the end of school we drifted apart and weren’t as close. Tommy became pretty popular in middle school, and puberty seem to treat him pretty well. Me on the other hand, I seem to get geekier as the year went on. Still Tommy’s companionship meant a lot in forming my early love for D&D. Tom liked creating the characters, the role playing and game mechanics part was a little foreign to him because that meant he had to act, and the rules while basic, were pretty abstract and cost a lot of money for a young kid with not a lot of disposable income.
The AD&D club at school wasn’t that great though, staying after school for two hours was rather lame, and we only met once or twice a month. I was looking to get a more regular fix. I managed to network with this guy Stevie and get his phone number. I would call him after we played together a few times and talk about our adventures, video games, and marching band. He mentioned he played AD&D with a few older kids who were in college and seniors in high school. I was pretty relentless about getting an invite to that game. Stevie relented and agreed to take me to one of the games. I would have my aunt drive me to his house and from there he would drive. Stevie had a curfew since he had his learners permit so we couldn’t play past midnight. So for the first few times there would be a series of pickups and drop offs.
My first night with this new group was amazing, emotional, and pretty traumatic. Most kids who play D&D in school go on a series of adventures to level their character and acquire items. I never heard of anyone's character ever dying, just getting more awesome until they “retire” them or get bored. This AD&D group was a lot different. It was a lot more regimented and disciplined when it came to character generation and how they played the game. The first rule of the Perry Hall Paramount Gaming Club was your rolled your character stats in front of everyone. I did pretty well my for my first time, well enough that I could play a Paladin class. This didn’t sit well with the table captain Malifard. You know that saying “Life imitating art”? Malifard’s character was a Half-Orc male Witch who lead flamboyantly the adventurers into battle from behind. Later we would jokingly say privately that they should take a picture of the person playing Malifard, and substituted his photo for the drawings in the D&D books describing Half-Orcs. As the night wore on, we would carefully make our way through the monastery looking to uncover what was causing the disturbance in the local villages. Since I was the FNG (Freaking New Guy)and Paladin, I would lead party from the front as the “Lantern Boy”. I managed to hold my own and help our party defeat several foes. I noticed Malifard passing private notes to the Dungeon Master after we defeated monsters. This wasn’t uncommon, but the frequency made me suspicious.
AD&D has a morality system built-in to help players role play their characters motivations. My character was forced to be Lawful Good because he was a Paladin, per the rules. This forced me to role play someone who had courage and would confront those who’s actions were not lawful. My suspicions of all the note passing lead me to believe Malifard was taking extra treasure from the party. So I wrote a note to the Dungeon Master stating that the next dungeon monster we defeat, that I would keep my eye on Malifard to see if I notice him taking any items from the party treasure. Right on queue, after we defeated the next dungeon boss monster and the note was passed from Malifard to the DM, I was asked to roll a saving throw via a note. I threw a 20 sided die behind the DM screen, and a note was passed to me stating I saw Malifard take some gems from the party treasure. I though about it a bit, and as I looked at the player face-to-face in real life I was at a quandary. To play my character accurately I had to confront Malifard and request he return the party treasure. In reality though, I was scared out of my mind on what to do. These guys were much older than me, and I didn’t want to not be invited back to play. Malifard stared at me and I back at him, he knew I knew, but also sensed weakness. So he made some sarcastic comment and challenged me to out him. The final rule of the PHPGC is “If it is your first night at PHPGC, you have to fight”.
I said rather weakly that he should return the gems he took that the party didn’t know about. Malifard turned into a politician right in front of me, and rationalized why he was entitled to the extra benefit and wasn't returning the treasure and to do something about it. I passed the DM a note saying I attack Malifard, but my damage was to subdue him instead of killing him. This is what is referred to as “Party Dissension” among our crowd. One advantage I seem to have in real life is I am pretty lucky. I managed to out roll Malifard’s attack rolls to defeat him and subdue him. His attacks on the other hand were to kill my character. So I was pretty weak after the exchange. The treasure was returned to the party, and all seemed to be forgiven. As a token of my spirit of cooperation I agreed to heal Malifard’s character wounds. I did that before healing myself unfortunately, and once I performed my action of compassion, I was met with Malifard the human’s wrath. I embarrassed the human Malifard in front of his friends, and the only recourse he had to restore his pride was to kill off my character. Which he did, even though the party objected as did Myran the Dungeon Master. Myran seemed pretty disturbed at Malifard’s actions, but there wasn't anything he could do technically, this was player generated combat, and he could only referee as a DM.
I was pretty upset at the joy and flamboyance Malifard the human player took at my demise. For the first time since I started to play D&D, I didn’t want to play anymore. Then my ego awoke my other hidden power. My power of sarcasm.
My sarcasm is my other power I employee when I feel situations are unfair. I use it to weaken my opponents directly bypassing their mental defenses. My uncanny vision to see peoples vulnerabilities of character gives me advantages in most verbal fights. Combined with my vindictiveness and you got one dangerous ninth grader on your hands. I wasn’t there to fight, but I wasn’t going to be a coward either. I don’t remember what I said exactly to cause what came next, but suffice to say I learned first hand what politicians are capable of.
I must have made some comment about Malifards sexuality, because he got more flamboyant and excited as he said with such glee “Now I remember who you are, your that kid who had that other kids penis in your mouth on that boy scout camping trip… What was the other kids name? Chucky?” I was floored, and more importantly visibly upset. To the point that my new bully started making fun of that now too.
In sixth grade I went on a Boy Scout camping trip with another more older group of Boy Scouts. The older Boy Scouts were to be the chaperones at Broad Creek and help us get merit badges. My troop was made up of mainly sixth graders so we lacked the maturity and adult support needed to complete tasks like getting merit badges and ranks ourselves. Malifard and Myran were members of the other troop and pseudo chaperones. The trip itself was uneventful until the last night and morning. I wasn’t aware of anything, but when I woke the final morning, the kids started calling me a “faggot” and said this kid in my troop Chucky put his dick in my mouth, and I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t have any idea what there were referring to, no memory, nada… because I sleep like a log. (A saw wood in my sleep with my snoring from what I am told). I grew-up next to 695 beltway, and railroad tracks. You could probably set off a nuclear bomb and I wouldn’t wake-up. This teasing was a lot more serious and more then kids call one another kids when they are young and immature as outlined in Louie CK’s bit. This was different, but after about a week of teasing I decided to knock Chucky on his ass in front of the troop for bragging about his T-bagging me in my sleep. I didn’t hit Chucky, I used a trick taught to me by my adopted father for subduing opponents and pining them to the ground by knocking them off balance for getting to close to me. I hate violence, and ever since the chess championship, never found a reason to throw fists first. After the take down things settled down to where I was just made fun of for playing D&D and playing music in the band after that.
I am sure this comes as a shock to some of you that read my blog. I am sure you are wondering how could kids and teenagers be so brutal. Why am I outing these people now? More importantly, is this my way of being vindictive and getting back at those who wronged me? I will allow you to draw your own conclusions as you read on.
Prior to the incident my school work suffered because I had a learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed. I had a major problem with reading comprehension. It took me twice as long to read passages and make sense what was being said. I also was horrible at spelling which made it more difficult for me to write papers for fear of being ridiculed by teachers and other students. I wasn’t sure if I was mentally slow or what. The Boy Scouts helped me focus on achieving goals that were a lot more conventional then school work. It gave me a sense of pride for earning bling that I could show in school and out of school. I didn’t quit the scouts after the incident, I stayed with it for as long as the troop stayed around, but by the end of the year the lack of adult supervision forced the troop to disband. The incident at Broad Creek was the result of not having enough adult supervision and parent involvement. We were fending for ourselves like The Lord of the Flies, where I played the role of Simon, who was resurrected as Piggy, but ultimately becomes Ralph.
Scouting didn’t really help me with my school work though. Music was an outlet that helped me develop some competence outside of the chaos that was my school work. I would spend hours practicing pieces to the point I could play them from memory. When D&D came into my life, it helped me focus on the meta-skills that were missing in my education. Reading became fun because the goal was not to parrot what some teacher wanted, but to construct a synthesis of data points that form an adventure. Reading D&D books became the basis to improve my math, science, history, and social studies. More importantly it taught me to be self-motivated and not rely on others to tell me what to do and how.
I didn’t like being teased by Malifard, but it did cause me to confront what happen to me in sixth grade in public once again. I don’t recall exactly what I did to overcome that embarrassment, all I know is I stuck with playing with that group by developing a friendship with Stevie and not letting Malifard get on my nerves too much. This D&D group was a lot different then most. Many nights we would all die to monsters from the adventure. We will come to call them “killer dungeons”. We found ourselves bonding together due to the tension generated from the DM’s wiliness to allow the monsters to win. We develop better tactics and became hyper focused when it came to delving into the DM’s adventures. Myran the DM got so proficient at running dungeons he could make them up as we went along. We would call them “Mind Dungeons”. The imaginary risks were rewarded by a common bond we all developed, eventually developing into respect. I always felt a little too immature and self-conscious playing with the college kids until one day, both Myran and Malifard would tell me how much they felt I matured since initially meeting and playing with them. When it came my turn to run adventures, I would emulate both of their DM styles. Myran’s strength was good story telling and Malifard always made sure there was enough tension countered by humor due to his flamboyant style. To this day Stevie and I still talk about our Adventures and how they changed us and shaped us.
Being teased is never easy, but it is part of growing up for some of us that don’t fit in. In small communities and high performance groups though, this is how the “right” members seem to be selected. In my experience smaller groups seem to use teasing and criticism to navigate the initial parts of the maturity model of storming, forming, norming, and performing to reach a level of trust that produces focused results . In large groups accountability and pride seem to be what is used to navigate the maturity model of siloes, standards, optimization, and modularity that allow for great achievements like putting a person on the moon. It is when the teasing becomes abuse, battery, and is treated with apathy, that we as a society need to be on guard.
Today the media has a field day reporting incidents of abuse and battery within groups. It appears the medias goal is to polarize the topic to create tension that develops into a real life drama causing viewers to choose sides. The media exploits these stories and takes the opportunity to paint a black and white portrayal of right vs. wrong. It seems justified because a lack of tension won’t hold the attention of the viewers.
When D&D first came out, the media portrayed the game as a form of satanic worship thus scaring parents and creating dysfunction within families by attacking their trust in their children. I am not saying D&D didn’t have isolated cases where college kids took the game a little too far, but it wasn’t the game, it was the kids lack of supervision that caused them to run into problems. I shutter to think what would have happen if to the Perry Hall marching band wasn’t allowed to initiate their members with “Gator meat”. I am surprised it was never reported as hazing. Last year there was an incident where the students of the Perry Hall soccer team celebrated their playoff win like the professional Ravens players did, and were going to not be allowed to continue their playoff run due to the negative media coverage. Finally, I am very glad that my boy scout incident didn’t reach media attention as well. It was embarrassing enough dealing with it on my own, but having to deal with it in the media would have made it ten times worse.
One of the media’s favorite topics as of late is moral turpitude. Scandals like Penn State, the Catholic Church, and the bulling of teens who are closet homosexuals are popular trends in media every few months. What seems to happen is someone in authority goes on trial in the media for not having the courage to come forward or act upon information they obtain. The media acts like they care until the story stops trending. Minor flare-ups occur post the immediate firestorm as investigations uncover new stories associated or linked to the original story, but in the end does anyone track the progress of the victims and get to the bottom of why the incident really happened? What is the real lesson to be learned here? To me what is on trial is intimacy and trust, and what results is our collective sprit as a society is broken for fear of invisible monsters. The lesson isn’t that we need courage to overcome being victims, but honesty so that we can forgive and move on. I think the reason why Malifard verbally embarrassed me, come to find out much later in life, was at the time he was a closet homosexual. He was confused, embarrassed by an under classman making fun not only of his competence as a gamer, but his sexuality. He had no course of action other then use his own vindictive power. Through the power of Facebook, some things can start to make sense. I feel horrible for the part I played, but I am glad we still remain friends to this day.
Obviously we will always need better oversight, monitoring, education, and maybe even better profiling of applicants for children leadership positions. Technology can help a lot here when applied correctly, unfortunately what we are getting though is pessimism and in some cases apathy for victims in favor of bringing someone to justice, and assassinating peoples character to protect institutions that have failed to properly monitor. I bet if forensic accounting was done, more money is spent on reporting the story and trying the case than is identifying all the potential victims and getting them the help they need. In the end what is needed for the victims to move forward in life probably has less to do with justice, but more to do with restoring their pride and passion for life.
Some people need a lot more help then others when they become the victims of embarrassing pranks. I think those that need the most help are the ones whose moral compass and self-esteem is broken from neglected emotional development. For me, I have examined my emotional development and identified key moments in my life that affect how I act when issues with competency, concern, and intimacy are brought to light. My conclusion was I always found something positive to get me through the neglect and stress I encountered. It usually was my closest friends who would help me identify those positive elements and encourage me to remain positive. I also had my share of friends who also use negative re-enforcement and skepticism to counter all the people trying to protect me. Without optimisms balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism and great friends, I probably wouldn’t be alive or successful today.
I want and need others to help me become a better person. It was through my closest friends I discovered a new power, the power of forgiveness. I now use the power of forgiveness tempered with accountability to learn from my mistakes and others. I wasn’t born perfect, and I don’t think anyone else is either. Growing-up and at certain times in my life I felt very alone in my thoughts. I would develop these schemes to thwart bullies and to get what I want in life. I lacked trust and forgiveness, thus found myself playing the role of Emperor Palpatine “The Villain” when in reality, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker “The Hero”. In the movie Return of the Jedi, Luke confronts Palpatine with his sarcasm and says “Your weakness is your over confidence”. Palpatine’s response is “And your faith in your friends is yours”.
This to me is what Darwin’s theory of evolution is all about though. The power of trust and forgiveness is a huge evolutionary step. Trust requires being weak and vulnerable and having faith, hope, and ultimately love to eliminate dysfunction. If you only rely on yourself and are overconfident and lack trust and forgiveness in others, you will probably die of a lack of vision or micromanagement. If you rely on others you will probably have a greater chance to live longer, but you need to avoid pessimist who seek to trap you and your friends and break the bonds of trust you have in one another. Forgiveness is a strength when properly managed and practiced that leads to greater character and thus greater achievements. It is what allows groups of people to learn from one another's mistakes and when one member is suffering, to offer compassion to strengthen and heal them.
The world of Dungeons and Dragons taught me to be mindful by balancing my optimism with healthy moral skepticism and not give up when my desire for everyone to get along didn’t initially happen. It also demonstrated the power of high performance teams and how when they learn to trust one another through eliminating dysfunctional and silo thinking, can develop a collective courage and have a lot of fun while saving the world from invisible monsters.
Finding that path wasn’t easy though, and In my last installment of the series I will discuss how I learned to walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time in “Marching to the Beat of a Higher Power.”
