The Happiest Days of Our Lives (8 page)

“I’m going to run the last mile,” I said. “I’ll either see you guys at the finish or you’ll step over my body in about 3,000 feet.”

They wished me well, and I began to jog. I extended my arm—just like a real runner—as I passed through the water station. A smiling middle-schooler pushed a Dixie cup into my hand and said, “Great job!”

“Thank you!” I said as I dumped the water over my face and head. I was on the western side of the Rose Bowl now, heading south. The sun was in my face, and I began to regret wearing my long-sleeved shirt.

The Rose Bowl has been involved in several landmark moments in my life, most of them when I was a teenager living in La Crescenta: When I was fourteen, I attended the Depeche Mode Concert for the Masses there. When I was fifteen, my best friend Darin taught me how to drive a stick shift in his VW Bug…right in the parking lot that was now on my left. My hip was on fire, and I was beginning to feel dangerously warm in my long sleeves, but I smiled.
This is a great way to spend a Sunday morning
, I thought.

When I rounded the penultimate corner in the race, I was breathing hard. The sun was beating down on me through a magnifying glass, in classic Warner Brothers cartoon-style, and I pushed my sleeves up as far as they could go. I sprayed the remainder of my water over my face and immediately felt better. I turned north and checked my Forerunner: I had less than a quarter of a mile to go. Surprisingly, the pain in my hip, groin, and ribs wasn’t that bad. Maybe it had just been masked by adrenaline so I could finish, but I’ve learned that there are times when you just don’t ask questions. I was in the final 1,000 meters! Music and cheering filled the air.

I set my eyes on the finish line, and the noise of the crowd faded away. Pretty soon, all I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears and the pounding of my feet on the pavement. With about thirty yards to go, I heard a familiar voice calling out, “Go Wil! You’re almost there! Go! Go! Go!”

I blinked my eyes and looked off to my right. There was Nolan, grinning broadly and jumping up and down. It was pure, concentrated mojo. I raised one of my hands up and made it into a fist. I pumped it in the air at him.

“Yeah! Go Wil! Go Wil!” he cheered. My heart swelled, and I finished the race running on air.

I crossed the finish line and got my time: 34 minutes. Not bad, all things considered. My body ached, my throat was dry, and my heart pounded fiercely in my chest. My 3.1 miles felt more like a marathon, which was a sad commentary on my current level of physical fitness, but I did it! I ran slower than my marathon training pace, but I did it! I needed to spend some time building memories with my family, and
I did it!

When I got off the course, I collapsed into the grass and caught my breath. After a few minutes, I stretched. The pain in my hip was slowly coming back, but Nolan’s cheering echoed in my head, and there wasn’t any pain at all strong enough to break through
that
wall of joy.

Eventually, I made my way over to our meeting place. Ten minutes or so later, Ryan and Amanda came over.

“What was your time?” I asked them.

“Thirty-six,” Ryan said. “What was yours?”

“Thirty-four.”

“Nice job,” he said. I ran this comment through my fifteen-year-old-to-English filter and got “
Nice job. [Sincere.]”

“Thank you, Ryan,” I said with a grin.

Behind us, on the other side of the giant American Airlines balloon, about fifty people were Jazzercising. Outrageously loud Europop music assaulted our weary ears, but the Jazzercisers seemed to enjoy it.

I always thought Jazzercise was an improv joke, you know, like “Biggus Dickus.” But it turns out it’s a real thing, and the people doing it were having a
really
good time. When the music went out (presumably because the girl leading them whooped and blew out the mixer), they kept right on going while she said things like, “Up to the left! Up to the left! And attitude! And attitude! Left! Left! Give me attitude! Attitude!”

Anne, Michelle, and Nolan walked up together.

“I learned something today,” I said.

“What’s that?” Anne asked.

“Jazzercising is all about attitude.”

She sat down next to me.

“How’d you do?” I asked her.

“I totally ran the whole way!” She was the happiest I’d seen her in weeks. She had also been under a lot of stress and pressure, so seeing her smile and relax nearly brought tears to my eyes.

“I’m really proud of you, honey,” I said.

We talked about our times, and I turned to Nolan.

“I loved it that you were cheering for me, Nolan,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he said. He was thirteen, and the inevitable day when I’d have to start using the English translator hadn’t yet arrived.

“What was your time?” I asked.

“Twenty-four minutes!” he said.

“Holy crap, Nolan!” I said. “That’s fast!”

“Yeah, it was fun,” he said. “I think I finished pretty close to the top.”

“Gosh, you think?”

The Jazzercise music started up again.

“What the—” Anne started.

“Attitude,” I said, “plus loud Europop, equals Jazzercise.”

We snacked for a few more minutes, picked up our stuff from the gear-check, and headed back to our car. As we crossed the street, thousands of walkers streamed across the bridge and turned into the final stretch. They were a sea of pink shirts, pink hats, pink balloons, pink flags. They were singing and shouting and having a great time.

“Oh my God,” Anne said. “Look at all those people!”

We did.

“We are totally part of that,” I said. “I’m proud of us. All of us.”

a portrait of the artist as a young geek

      
This is a story about who I am, and why.

December, 1983

I
sat on the floor in Aunt Val’s house and opened up her Christmas present to me. It was a red box with a really cool-looking dragon on the front of it. Inside, there were a few books, some dice, a map, and a crayon to color in the dice.

“That’s a game that I hear lots of kids like to play, Willow,” she said. “It’s dragons and wizards and those things you liked from
The Hobbit
. The back says you use your imagination, and I know what a great imagination you have.” My brother played with Legos and my cousins played with handheld electronic games. I felt a little ripped off.

“Wow,” I said, masking my disappointment. “Thanks, Aunt Val!”

Later, while the other kids played with Simon and Mattel Electronic Football, I sat near the fireplace and examined my gift. It said that I could be a wizard or a fighter, but there weren’t any pieces that looked like that. There were a lot of weird dice, but I had to color in the numbers. That seemed silly, but at least it was something to do, so I grabbed the black crayon and rubbed it over the pale blue dice, just like the instructions said.

Aunt Val (who was my favorite relative in the world throughout my entire childhood and right up until she died a few years ago) walked into the living room. “What do you think, Willow?”

“I colored the dice,” I said, and showed her the result. “But I haven’t read the book yet.”

She patted my leg. “Well, I hope you like it.” She moved to the other side of the room, where my cousin Jack poked at a Nintendo Game and Watch.

I opened the
Player’s Guide
and began to read.

February, 1984

It was afternoon PE in fifth grade, and I was terrified. I ran and jumped and ducked, surrounded by a jeering crowd of my classmates. The PE teacher did nothing to stop the attack—and, in fact, encouraged it.

“Get him!” someone yelled as I fell to the asphalt, small rocks digging into my palms. I breathed hard. Through my adrenaline-fueled flight-or-fight response, the world slowed, the jeering faded, and I wondered to myself why our playground was just a parking lot and why we had to wear corduroy pants in the middle of a Southern California heat wave. Before I could offer any answers, a clear and loud voice spoke from within my head. “Hey,” it said. “You’d better get up and move, or you’re dead.”

I nodded my head and looked up in time to see the red playground ball, spinning in slow motion, as the word “Voit” rotated into view. Pain exploded across my face and a mighty cheer erupted from the crowd. The PE teacher blew her whistle.

I don’t know how I managed to be the last kid standing on our team. I usually ran right to the front of the court so I could get knocked out quickly and (hopefully) painlessly before the good players got worked up by the furor of battle and started taking head shots, but I’d been stricken by a bout of temporary insanity—possibly caused by the heat—on this February day, and I’d actually played to win the game, using a very simple strategy: run like hell and hope to get lucky.

I blinked back tears as I looked up at Jimmie Just, who had delivered the fatal blow. Jimmie was the playground bully. He spent as much time in the principal’s office as he did in our classroom, and he was the most feared dodgeball player at the Lutheran School of the Foothills.

He laughed at me, his long hair stuck to his face in sweaty mats, and sneered. “Nice try, Wil the Pill.”

I picked myself up off the ground, determined not to cry. I sucked in deep breaths of air through my nose.

Mrs. Cooper, the PE teacher, walked over to me. “Are you okay, Wil?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” I lied. Anything more than that and I risked breaking down into humiliating sobs that would follow me around the rest of the school year, and probably on into sixth grade.

“Why don’t you go wash off your face,” she said, not unkindly, “and sit down for a minute.”

“Okay,” I said. I walked slowly across the blacktop to the drinking fountains. Maybe if I really took my time, I could run out the clock and I wouldn’t have to play another stupid dodgeball game.

January, 1984

Papers scattered across my bed appeared to be homework to the casual observer, but to me they were people. A thief, a couple of wizards, some fighters: a party of adventurers who desperately wanted to storm The Keep on the Borderlands. But without anyone to guide them, they sat alone, trapped in the purgatory of my bedroom, straining behind college-ruled blue lines to come to life.

I tried to recruit my younger brother to play with me, but he was 7, and more interested in Monchichi. The kids in my neighborhood were more interested in football and riding bikes, so I was left to read through module B2 by myself, wandering the Caves of Chaos and dodging Lizard Men alone.

February, 1984

I washed my face and drank deeply from the drinking fountain. By the time I made it back to the benches along the playground’s southern edge, I’d lost the urge to cry, but my face radiated enough heat to compete with the blistering La Crescenta sun.

I sat down near Simon Teele, who, thanks to the wonders of alphabetization, ended up with me and Harry Yan (the school’s lone Asian kid) on field trips, on fire drills, and in chapel. Simon was taller than all of us, wore his hair down into his face, and really kept to himself. He was reading an oversized book that sort of looked like a textbook, filled with charts and tables.

We weren’t officially friends, but I knew him well enough to make polite conversation.

“Hey,” I said. “Why don’t you have to play dodgeball?”

“Asthma.”

“Lucky,” I said. “I hate dodgeball.”

“Everyone hates dodgeball,” he said, “except Jimmie Just.”

“Yeah.” I was relieved to hear someone else say out loud what I’d been thinking since fourth grade.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you reading?”

He held up the book and I saw its cover: a giant statue, illuminated by torches, sat behind an archway. Two guys were on its head, prying loose one of its jeweled eyes, as a group of people stood at the base. One was clearly a wizard; another was obviously a knight.

“Player’s Handbook,” he said. “Do you play D&D?”

I gasped. According to our ultra-religious school, D&D was Satanic. I looked up for teachers, but none were nearby. A hundred feet away on the playground, another game of dodgeball was underway. I involuntarily flinched when I heard the hollow
pang!
of the ball as it skipped off the ground.

“You’re going to get in trouble if you get caught with that,” I said.

“No, I won’t,” he said. “If I just keep it turned upside down, they’ll never see it. So do you play or not?”

“I have the red box set and a bunch of characters, but I don’t have anyone to play with.”

“That’s Basic,” he said. “This is Advanced.”

“Oh.”

“But if you want, you could come over to my house this weekend and we could play.”

I couldn’t believe my good luck. With a dodgeball to the face, Fate put me on the bench next to the kid who, over the next few months, helped me take my first tentative steps down the path to geekdom. He had a ton of AD&D books: the
Dungeon Master’s Guide
, which had a truly terrifying demon on the cover, and would result in certain expulsion if seen at school; the
Monster Manual
, which was filled with dragons; and the
Fiend Folio
, which not only had demons and devils, but a harpy and a nymph, accompanied by a drawing of a naked woman! With
boobs!!

Simon’s parents were divorced, and he lived with his mom in a huge house in La Canada. His room was filled with evidence of a custody Cold War. Too many toys to count littered the floor and spilled out of the closet, but even though we were surrounded by Atari and Intellivision, GI Joe and Transformers, we had D&D fever, and the only prescription was more polyhedral dice.

Though it was just the two of us playing, we stormed the Keep on the Borderlands and explored the Isle of Dread. We spent all our free time at school making new characters, designing dungeons, and unsuccessfully attempting to recruit other kids to play with us.

March, 1984

My babysitter Gina’s older brother was an experienced Dungeon Master, and he let us play in one of his custom-made dungeons. My fighter walked into a room, got trapped behind a portcullis, and died when I sprang a trap trying to escape. Simon and I decided later that it would be okay to resurrect him for our own adventures without penalty, because Gina’s brother’s dungeon was really too hard, and it wasn’t part of our world, anyway.