Read Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons Online
Authors: Shelly Mazzanoble
Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons (13 page)
Think playing D&D and dating are mutually exclusive? Can playing D&D negatively affect your dating life? Not according to the informal market research study I conducted around the office. Surprise! I work with a few guys who play D&D and have significant others. And by a few I mean about 210.
Here's what my super-sleuthy investigative skills turned up.
10
:
Number of guys who play D&D who are in relationships that I could round up on short notice
3
:
Number of their significant others who play D&D
1
:
Number of significant others who played D&D until they felt like their boyfriends were using a fantasy setting to hash out real-life relationship problems
1
:
Number of boyfriends who were using a fantasy setting to hash out real-life relationship problems
8
:
Number of guys who tried to get their significant others into D&D
7
:
Number of guys who initially hid the fact they played D&D from their significant others
8
:
Number of guys who would love to have a regular D&D game with their significant others.
2
:
Number of guys who are happy to have D&D all to themselves
4
:
Number of guys who bought their significant others Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress in an attempt to get them to play D&D
3
:
Number of significant others who enjoyed Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress
1
:
Number of significant others who thought Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress was vapid, silly, and too girly
1
:
Number of significant others I hope gets a nasty bladder infection the day of our company holiday party and, sadly, won't be able to attend
me:Â Â Â Yes, because that's part of the story! The temperature was unseasonably warm so I didn't need a jacket. Instead I wore the pashmina wrap Roxy brought me back from Paris when she went there on their honeymoon.
judy: But that doesn't have anything to do with your homeowners association meeting! Isn't that what the story is about?
me:Â Â Â It does if you just let me finish!
judy: Your stories are wonderful but sometimes the details are â¦Â how can I say this â¦Â excessive.
me:Â Â Â Some might say flowery or
narratively gifted.
judy: No, I'd still say excessive. Sometimes I want to shake you and scream, “Get to the point! I don't care what color the tablecloths were or how much salt was in your gnocchi!”
me:Â Â Â Well maybe that
is
the point! Maybe it's part of my story!
judy: You were always like this. When you were little you'd start off telling me about your lunch and how much you hated Beth and how you'd absolutely die if you didn't get a new Papa Smurf and how mad you were that Mrs. Munroe's class gets a pet rabbit and all you have is a sunflower and, oh yeah, you love Rocky Road ice cream so much. Turns out you were trying to ask for help with your math homework.
me:Â Â Â I wanted to share things with you. I can't believe you're making this into a bad thing. Would you rather I had been one of those teenagers who hate their moms and never come out of their rooms?
judy: When you were a little kid? Maybe. It was much worse back then because on top of your effusiveness, you also had a stutter.
me:Â Â Â I stuttered?
judy: A-a-a-all the t-t-t-time. You don't remember?
me:Â Â Â Wow. I probably blocked out this painful memory because my primary caregiver mocked me.
judy: Or the shock therapy we put you through eliminated most of your long-term memories. Yeah, that's more likely it.
me:Â Â Â Can I please tell you what happened at the homeowners meeting? It was pretty terrible. Like leave-carpenter-nails-under-my-car-tires terrible.
judy: Good thing I renewed your AAA membership this year.
me:Â Â Â I bet my neighbors would toilet-paper my home if only they could figure out how to do it on my share of the building only.
judy: I'd love to hear, but I don't have time. I have a doctor's appointment.
Tomorrow.
me:Â Â Â You are a horrible person.
judy: Oh, stop. It's not that I don't like talking to you or enjoy your stories. Sometimes I wish you had an edit button. Remember how frustrated you'd get when Mike would finish your sentences?
me:Â Â Â That wasâ.
judy: Annoying. We told him to do that. You know, to help you along.
me:Â Â Â I don't believe this. Half the things he interjected were lies. Like, “I want to eat Chinese food!”
judy: You loved Chinese food.
me:Â Â Â No, I didn't! I hated it!
He
liked it! He used me to get sweet and sour chicken!
judy: That's so weird. I can't believe you don't like Chinese food. Do you remember how mad you'd get if you thought people weren't paying attention to you anymore? You'd start crying and stomping your little feet and yelling, “Mommy, make them listen to me!”
me:Â Â Â These are horrible memories.
judy: I know! I can't believe they're all flooding back to me. You should go off on tangents more often. Oh, wait â¦Â what am I saying?
me:Â Â Â Very funny. Now I know why I spent so much time alone, with just the voices in my head to keep me company.
judy: That makes sense. Maybe it's not your inability to finish one thought. Maybe all of your personalities are extroverts.
me:Â Â Â Or maybe I was starved for attention and the only thing I could do was tell inane stories.
judy: Don't blame me for your issues! I tried to help! At least with your storytelling. Did you ever read
How to Win Friends and Influence People
by Daleâ?
me:Â Â Â
No!
judy: Well, maybe you should. Before your next homeowners association meeting.
I will never speak to you again if you tell my mother I said this:
She's right.
A little.
I can be a bit wordy. Oh, stop! I know what you're thinking. How many trees had to die because
someone
doesn't know when to say when to a paragraph? And this after some vigorous editing.
It's out of my control. There are perfectly good words out there and no one is using them. Punctuation marks unemployed! I see a tangent and I have to jump on it like Denzel Washington on a runaway train. It's just that my story about that one time I tried stand-up paddle boarding might remind me of my thirtieth birthday in Hawaii, which triggers a memory of the unbridled crush I had on Rick, Magnum P.I.'s sidekick, which brings me to â¦Â well, you get the picture.
The road to “the point” is a long, meandering, sometimes detoured route for me. I'm a rambler. A subscriber to the “tell, don't show” philosophy. And when I sense I'm losing you, I talk faster. Sometimes I act like Tootsie, the separation-anxiety-plagued black lab I fostered, and will follow you from room to room if you try to get away.
I love telling a story. I love details. I love a rapt audience. But I never realized until my mom told me to
shut the hell up
that perhaps others didn't appreciate my wordiness.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” Bart informed me when I told him Judy nearly hung up on me today.
“You know, I have to disagree with the old Bard on that one. Everyone knows a good joke is one you invest your audience in. There's got to be that buildup. Even a knock-knock joke has some suspense.”
“Ah, but in Shakespeare's day âbrevity' referred to âintelligence.'Â ”
I should note that Bart was an English major.
“So you're calling me stupid? Because I like to tell long stories? Here's a story for you. There once was a boy who called his girlfriend stupid. She hit him with a frying pan. The end.”
He laughed. And moved a few inches away from me. And took the frying pan I was drying out of my hands and put it away.
“I am doing no such thing,” he said. “But even you admit that you have trouble articulating your point, especially under pressure, in an argument.”
It's true. If you think just everyday story retelling is bad, you should hear me debate. Forget it. If it's something I'm passionate about, I never get the words out quick enough. It's like they get clogged up in transport from my brain to my mouth and just sit there all frothy and foamy until someone acknowledges I'm yelling and lets me win the argument. Or I burst out crying before it gets to that point. Either way, I win the argument by default.
And when the argument ends I can't stop thinking about it and all the clever, cool, pithy things I should have said. I remember facts and anecdotes to back up my claim. Sometimes I even go so far as to craft an e-mail (it could take days) that explains all that I was trying to say when I was
gurgling and choking and throwing rigatoni at you. (Yep. Did that.) Usually I send the e-mail, much to my opponent's surprise. In D&D, I believe this is called
delaying your action.
Case in point: the recent homeowners association meeting. Now these things aren't ever riotous good times. Usually we have barely enough for a quorum, a tin of Danish butter cookies, and lots of bitching about the property management company that includes empty threats like
this will be the year we fire their asses.
As far I can tell from the meeting minutes, they've been saying that for at least twenty-three years
This meeting, however, was different. After the board met with a team of structural engineers, it was discovered that
parts
of our thirty-one-year-old stucco abode were showing signs of water intrusion. I know what you're thinkingâstucco in the Northwest? Right. It's like wearing stilettos to a hoe-down-themed wedding. (Been there, worn that.) It doesn't make sense, but in 1979 I'm sure it looked darn good. (Just like my stilettos, thank you.)