The sort of thing that only happens to me

So as I wrote before, I decided to get back into tabletop RPG because it's something fun where you meet a lot of people.  Since I haven't found a home game yet, I've been doing D&D Adventurer's League and Pathfinder Society since those are groups you can drop in and out of at will and just enjoy a nice afternoon of gaming while being in public and interacting with humans without committing to said random humans.

I'd been doing internet searches for groups in the area and found an entry for "Northbrook Pathfinder Society" and emailed the organizer, who emailed me back quickly with a very articulate and friendly email inviting me to play.  I got the impression that this guy was an instructor at the local junior high (where I and my son both went to school, actually), who was getting kids interested in tabletop gaming.  It seemed like a fun, wholesome, easy group to play with, especially as it set of my teacher-spidey-sense.  I love working with kids if I feel I can get them enthused about a topic.  When my son Tony was in school I ran a Junior Great Books group and I also put on a micro demo every year at the school science fair to get folks using microscopes.  Working with kids in the role of a teacher is something I really like (but not enough to do it full time...).

Anyway, today I went to the meeting and found a table with five 12- to 13-year-olds getting ready to play.  I was pleased to see there were two girls there (girl gamer power!).  But no instructor.  Because the person I'd been communicating with turned out to be... you guessed it... another 13-year-old kid.  

I would have bailed, mostly because I didn't want to seem like a total weirdo, but the whole teacher thing weighed on me.  I felt I couldn't say, "Oh, screw this, I'm not playing with kids," as I thought that would be incredibly rude.  I'm sure they wouldn't have cared but... anyway, I sat down and played a four hour scenario with the group.

Fighting the final boss in the scenario today... I was the only one with heals... so I guess it was worth being the super creepy lady sitting on the Sunset Foods balcony with all the young folks?  I guess?

It actually was a lot of fun.  The group reminded me a lot of those kids on "Stranger Things"; the leader in particular seemed extremely bright.  He reminded me a lot of my son Tony at that age.  And I don't mind playing with kids or young people, actually.  I played a LOT of Halo and videogames with Tony when he was younger and sometimes was in multiplayer with him and his friends.  That being said...  I mean, come on, it's weird to play with a group whose TOTAL age is still less than yours.

SIgh.  This only happens to me.  I just blunder into stuff like this. 

The only consolation was that I think (or hope) that the adults that walked by assumed I was one of the kids' mom, and not like a super creepy lady who lures children to their watery graves.  At one point the leader's grandfather stopped by...  I shook his hand and gave him my full name and afterwards gave the leader one of my business cards to give to his grandfather.

*Cringe*

Oh god, the cringing.  So much cringing.  I think it will take at least a week for the cringing to wear off.  

Anyway, I did have fun and was useful as they had no healer and I ended up preventing a TPK.  But I did end by thanking them profusely for helping me learn the game, and said I thought it was probably a little weird to them that this old lady showed up, but thanks again, and if they ever had a medical question they were welcome to ask and then I got the hell out of there.

I remember back around 1979 that I played D&D with some nerdy friends once a week (and then went to Big Boy's for milkshakes and french fries) and our DM was a guy who wore fatigues.   I thought he was MUCH older than us, but in retrospect he was likely only in his early or mid-twenties.  I wonder if he might have been a VIetnam vet and maybe a relative of one of the kids.  He was a great DM so we didn't care.  

Likely the kids didn't care either, but I felt I was intruding on something that should be an adult-free and happy memory for these kids.  

Tomorrow I'm going back to Mount Prospect to try another Pathfinder Scenario with the awkward grownups that play there.  Where we can all be awkward together without anyone calling protective services.

*Cringe*

Hey, you know, it gets me out of the house and off the streets, where I'd likely just be doing crime or fomenting a revolution or some such. Everybody wins?  Right?

*Cringe*

*Cringe*

 Today's Norwegian Vocabulary Word: pinlig
  Pronounced: (peen-lee).
   (Translation: embarrassing)
 Exercise: Use "pinlig" in a sentence:
 Example: Denne ettermiddagen var en pinlig situasjon
   (This afternoon was an embarrassing situation)

Memorization: Things I think about in the shower 3

Every semester I'm astonished when students (plural) tell me they don't know how to memorize.  

Me (left) and my little sister Molly in the 1970s.  We had to go outside to play in the summer (no air conditioner in the house) provided we showed up back at home around 6:40pm for dinner when my dad got home from work on the train.  If we didn't show up, Mom would call friends' houses or just drive around the neighborhood until she spotted us.  No cell phones.  Like animals.

It occurred to me just now as I was washing my hair that when I was a kid no one had a smart phone. Or GPS (maps people). Or a portable phone.  Or a calculator.  Or a PC.  I took a computer course in 1980 and we handed in our programs on punch cards.  Seriously.  Camera film took a few days to develop, and if you wanted video of yourself on vacation, it was usually done on a Super8 camera with no sound.  When I was seven the family got a little cassette tape recorder and we all gathered around it in astonishment...  

Anyway, if you wanted to call someone, you either looked up or usually memorized their number.  In school there were no calculators, so you were forced to memorize times tables.  When I worked at the Renn Faire up in Wisconsin one weekend with my friend Heloise, we had to make change for people using math in our heads.  To do a research paper, you had to go to the library and look at physical books.  You wrote your paper in longhand.  Typing up the paper took forever because it was on a typewriter, so if you decided to move a paragraph you had to retype the whole thing.  

The point is that we HAD to memorize everything, and finding out information was an enormous pain in the ass.  So memorizing was an essential part of our lives.

So... maybe I need to actually teach my students how to memorize.  It might be worth an hour or two of lecture time to do that.

...this also explains why I get so infuriated at students that are too lazy to look up something themselves on the internet.  When a student emails or texts me to ask something like, "What does gynecomastia mean?" I remember sitting on the floor of the public library with all those f****ng reference books looking up information.  Google definitions yourself, chump!  You have no idea how easy you have it!

 Today's Norwegian Vocabulary Word: lillesøster
  Pronounced: (lil-leh-suhs-tehr).
   (Translation: little sister)
 Exercise: Use "lillesøster" in a sentence:
 Example: Min lillesøster heter Molly.
   (My little sister is named Molly)

Looking For Group

My son was nagging me again at lunch this week to be more socially active.  So this week I've looked at a bunch of "find platonic friends" websites and most of them appear in actuality to be "find erotic friend" websites, which is just gross (I'm old-fashioned, I guess?). When it comes to friend groups, to be honest, I prefer hanging out with men.  They're just easier to deal with and you don't have to entertain them or engage in constant conversation.   I think it is since most everyone around me in my student and then medical years were men (because in the old days women weren't encouraged to do science or math because it was the 1970s/1980s). But back then, and even nowadays, if you are a single woman, then the automatic assumption is that you are desperate for a man and a good shag; evidently women, especially divorcees or widows, are motivated only by their starving genitalia (see vagina hats). So single men act awkward and married men's wives hate a single woman's guts.

D and D Adventurers League, May 3, 2017, Dice Dojo

Over the last month I've been going to tabletop/RPG events at various game stores and they've been a lot of fun and have mostly populated with men. A lot of middle-aged guys, actually, and I'd say so far the demographic has been about 80% relatively bilaterally symmetric, articulate and educated men between the ages of 25 and 65, and only a merciful few were wearing cat ears or Pokemon shirts.  I find I also really love the RP aspect of tabletop RPGs  (thank you Patti Interrante for the acting lessons). Dice Dojo had an exceptionally welcoming crowd and I'd go back in a heartbeat except the drive each way took me over an hour; the day I went there were more than 50 people there, and I left the game with a migraine from all the noise and movement. I did a tabletop game day (City of Mist) over in Mount Prospect at Games Plus, and the GM was terrific, but alas lives in Kansas City. This Sunday I'm going to a Pathfinder one-shot at Games Plus and there's a Junior High (I think drama) teacher who plays Pathfinder on Saturdays with younger kids, which could be fun and fulfilling (teaching is always fun), but not really a place to find like-minded middle-aged folks.

I fully admit it is my own fault, the whole friend thing. I've always been the kid who would literally rather spend recess in the library reading Heinlein than going outside.  And I'm the worst at being a BFF. I'm that friend who thinks a lot about you all the time, and is very happy to talk if you call, and will even gladly rush over to help you bury a body... but you otherwise will only hear from once a year.  Probably in the form of a text.  

I admit that I'm a bit picky too... I mean, I have friends from all walks of life that I honestly really like spending time with... but the few people I consider my best BFF friends, that I can really relax with (again, that I only call a few times a year because I suck) all have post-graduate degrees in something or other, and are extremely well-read, articulate, creative, compassionate and open-minded. They also have a preposterously strong work ethics and, most importantly, are willing to look past the mood swings that constantly plague me (part and parcel of my chronic depression). 

Anyway, Tony, I'm doing my best to fulfill your idea of "socially active".  That was what I was trying to write.  

 Today's Norwegian Vocabulary Word: koselig
  Pronounced: (koh-slee).
   (Translation: coziness/friendship/happiness-ish)
 Exercise: Use "koselig" in a sentence:
 Example: Gjør det koselig hjemme; lys noen stearinlys!
   (Make a cozy home; light some candles!)