Recently, I was cleaning out some of my old stuff from my parents’ garage and found a lot of my old childhood books. Several of these were important in my late childhood and “tween” years, so I kept them for Erik. One is The Fallen Spaceman, whose protagonist is coincidentally named Erik; I would have saved it anyway because I have very warm memories of that book. The collection also includes my Choose Your Own Adventure books, a find that got me to wondering: have I always been a roleplayer, even before that fateful day when I first discovered Dungeons & Dragons? And perhaps more importantly, is my son doomed to be a geek?
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The fact that I’m having a son is slowly starting to sink in. I’m trying to figure out how to brush up on my sports skills. Not that I’ve ever been terribly athletic, or that my boy will be playing any time soon, but it’s an important job for a dad.
It’s not the only one, of course. Over the holidays, I heard Judd Apatow reviewing DVDs on NPR. One of them was a documentary about a cinematographer made by the man’s son. Apatow said that one of the best parts of the DVD wasn’t even in the film itself. It was an extra about the filmmaker showing the work to his father and finally getting the old man’s approval, which in Apatow’s estimation the guy had probably been striving for all his life. It really drove home to meâ€â€as though it needed emphasizingâ€â€the importance and uniqueness of the relationship between father and son.
I’ve started that, too. I’ve been talking to the stinker a bit, and the other day I felt him kick (or perhaps punch). That was pretty cool.
