Tag: stories

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Simply G-ma

“Do you want to know what G-ma left us?” Heather said with a smile. “A bookcase.”

My smile matched hers.

“Of course she did.”

It fit, and not just because our home has a minor over-abundance of volumes. (In the same way that Taylor Swift has a minor bit of popularity right now.) Like that bookcase, Heather’s Grandma Marilyn was the starting point for a lot of stories … the kind you write together.

About a week ago, those stories turned a final page.  

G-ma was gone.

We’d known it was coming for a long time. Nothing fell out of a clear blue sky. We had time and beyond to prepare, to show love yet again, to leave no regrets or what-if’s behind. In a way, it didn’t matter. When a life of love gets removed, it feels like someone took scissors to a yearbook photo – you can tell by the hole that someone should be there.

And G-ma was quite a someone.

There’s an old joke that in Reporter Language, the word “feisty” means “short, female.” Marilyn fit both the joking description and the real one, a small lady with a strong backbone and an open heart. She could be stubborn in the best possible way, ready to stand for and with the people she cared about … but also to be knowingly silly in a way that only the truly fearless can be.

We always got along. In fact, we hit it off so well that she wanted to make sure Heather never lost me. “Make sure you make him pot roast,” she told her early in our marriage, a bit of 1950s love language that still sets us both laughing at the memory of it.

I don’t even like pot roast. But I love the heart that offered it.

She played piano well but always wanted to hear me instead when we visited. A frozen pizza served as the centerpiece for many a conversation, often while a pet bird sang out in the background. Helping put up the G-ma’s Christmas tree was an unbreakable tradition, no matter what else might be happening in the world.

Simple things.

But the simplest of all was that Marilyn listened. Fiercely.

She didn’t always agree. (I did mention the stubbornness, right?) But she always listened, not just waiting her turn in the conversation but actively considering what you said. She wanted to understand, to know, to hear.

Heather carries that same trait. It’s not always an easy one. It lowers your shields and leaves you open to the hurt of others, a hurt you sometimes can’t do much to heal. But it also opens you up to their passions, their wonder, their delight in life. When you listen, the world becomes more than a vague outline – it becomes real people in all their pain and glory.

When we listen, we truly become a “we.”

It’s a gift often absent these days. But it can be recovered at any moment, any time when we’re willing to move the focus off our own self. That, too, is not easy. But it’s essential.

By taking those moments, we bring a bit of someone else inside us. When we do, it means that no one’s ever truly gone. We keep them alive and pass them on, touching lives as we were touched.

So maybe the story of G-ma isn’t really over. It’s just up to us to write the sequel.

 Thank you, Marilyn. For the bookcase. For the moments. For the life well-spent.

And don’t worry. We may just make that pot roast yet.

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What Oscar Forgot

Oscar needs a football helmet.

Don’t worry. I’m not predicting yet another Slap Heard ‘Round The Academy. Not unless Jimmy Kimmel sets up a gag, anyway. But now that the nominees have been announced and the countdown is under way, the Academy Awards really should have the proper gear.  

After all, they’re getting more and more indistinguishable from the Super Bowl.

Yeah, I said it. Hollywood’s golden night and football’s biggest stage are separated by about four weeks, some turf and not much else. Take a look from 1,500 feet – the typical altitude of the Goodyear Blimp – and think of what we have here.

There’s weeks of hype from every conceivable angle and a few inconceivable ones. A huge splash on the day itself. A main event that goes on and on and on. (And on.)

And more often than not, regardless of who wins or loses, it’s the weirdness that steals the headlines.

To be fair, the NFL at least plans for it. It’s practically a cliché that nine times out of 10, the Big Game is less interesting than the Big Commercials. (Or occasionally the Big Power Outage or the Big Wardrobe Malfunction, but that’s another story.) But when Oscar takes the stage, the possibilities are as endless as the running time. Will the wrong winner be announced? Will angry celebrities storm the stage? It’s a night that’s seen more on-stage nightmares than a Halloween special:  garbled names, awkward kisses, and even an on-camera streaker to liven up the evening.

Granted, some of that is the risk of a live performance. I get that. Things happen. But when year after year, the flubs, cringes and oddities are more interesting than the show itself, there just might be a problem.

We’ve known this for years. Heck, we’ve known it for decades. And the surface reason isn’t a secret: the show runs too dang long. Last year’s Oscars dragged out for nearly four and a half hours. The longer it goes, the more tedious it gets and the more time you have for something to go wrong.

But it goes deeper than that. If it was all about running time, people wouldn’t binge entire seasons of TV. Oscar audiences have fallen like a rock, but an “Avatar” sequel that’s more than three hours long is burning up the box office.

No, it’s something more fundamental. Something so simple, it’s Performance 101: a show isn’t about the performer. It’s about the audience.

If they don’t buy your story, you have no show.

That’s true for blockbusters. It’s true for art films. It’s true for any performing venue, from the smallest stage to the biggest stadium. The audience has to care. It can’t just be about you.

And for an awards show – a night designed for self-congratulation – there’s no easier trap to fall into.

That’s an important lesson to remember. And not just for Hollywood. Most of us will never get a multi-million dollar movie contract. (Mine just got lost in the mail, right?) But we all have the same chance to be aware of the people around us and hear what matters to them. To understand why they care and where they hurt. To connect their story with ours.

When we can do that, we can make a difference.  

I hope Oscar eventually learns that. I know we can. And on a smaller budget, to boot.

Listen. Care. Come together.

And if you come together at a Super Bowl party, let me know how the commercials went, OK?

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One More Time

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can … and apparently, that includes taking another swing through movie theaters.

Yeah, the webhead’s back for Labor Day, sending his most recent installment, “No Way Home,” back onto the big screen. Inevitably, it’s an extended edition – always gotta offer more, right? – but at heart, it dusts off an unfamiliar word: re-release.

(Enter Obi-Wan Kenobi: “Now that’s a word I’ve not heard in a long time. A long time.”)

I know, I know. These days, it seems like every movie we see is a sequel or a re-boot of some kind, a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of the industry. “The Wizard of Oz” from 1939 that we all know and love, for example,  was the third version of L. Frank Baum’s children’s story to hit the screen and the 10th Oz film of any kind. Ding-dong, the story’s never dead!

But the re-release was already starting to become a thing of the past in the age of VCRs, never mind a time of streaming, DVD and Blu-ray options. Why send “Star Wars” back through first-run theaters for the umpty-umpth time when you can make money from home viewing and save the big screens for your new stuff?

But of course, when you change the setting, you change the story a little bit as well. Take a movie you’ve seen a thousand times at home, one that you could quote blindfolded. Put it back on the big screen for even one night. You’ll see details that escaped attention, feel the impact of a story in its intended scale … and of the people around you discovering the same thing.

It’s a chance to truly re-read the story.

And I love a good re-read.

As I’ve mentioned before, our home has enough books to qualify as the North Longmont branch of the public library. At any given time, I may be reading half a dozen at once … and of those, it’s almost a guarantee that one or two will be re-reads.

Every so often, someone will ask me why. After all, there’s a ton of new stuff to catch up on. (Heck, there’s a ton of new stuff to catch up on just in the living room.) Why plunge back into a story you already know?

But for me, and for the many other inveterate re-readers out there, it’s not just a rehash. It’s more like visiting an old friend.

There’s comfort in coming back to a loved story, as you not only revive favorite scenes and characters, but re-awaken how you felt when you met them.

There’s discovery, too. Some of my favorite books continue to reveal new details every time I open the covers. It might be something I’d forgotten or overlooked – or simply that I’ve changed enough to see the old material in a new way.  

There’s the joy of introducing someone new to a favorite. Watching Missy discover Bilbo Baggins and Harry Potter during nighttime reads enhanced the magic (so to speak) for both of us. And now that we both know the tales well, our re-reads strengthen that family bond.

It’s a good approach to life in general. Sure, one should always be ready to explore new trails. But there’s still value to be found in the roads that brought you here. Old lessons still matter. Old memories can still grant assurance. And past joys can still bring light in a dark time.

So take a moment to look back. It might be just what you need when life is driving you up the wall.

And if you meet a certain wall-crawler up there .. say hi for me, will you?

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Tellers of the Tale

It’s a truism that we lose celebrities in bunches. We lose everyone in bunches, really, famous or otherwise.

But when the bunch includes some of our storytellers, I pay a little more attention.

And so, in a time when Hollywood passings fill the headlines, my own eye wanders to the microphone and the keyboard. Simple places. Places of magic.

Places that, for a while, were the homes of Vin and David.

**

Vin Scully was the greatest of American baseball announcers. No argument. Also, no frills. In a television era, he brought the tools of his radio days: constant description, constant stories, with no signature catchphrase or verbal pyrotechnics. Baseball suited him like no other sport could have, with a pace that allowed him to put just the right word in just the right place … or even no words at all, in times when a few seconds of silence would say it all.

David McCullough? So often, the subjects of his histories were the overlooked: landmarks so common that we’d stopped thinking about them or presidents we’d passed by. The Brooklyn Bridge. The Panama Canal. Harry Truman. All gained a new day in the spotlight through his pen. One of his best-known biographies even wound up turning John Adams into a television star – a fate the notoriously cranky Massachusetts lawyer might have regarded with a bit of bemusement.

And somewhere along the line, the Voice of the Dodgers and the popular historian reminded us that there aren’t’ any ordinary moments. Not really.

Because if you look closely enough, the extraordinary can wait anywhere.

**

When I used to work as a newspaper reporter, I spoke to a lot of kids about the profession. I always said that my favorite part was that everyone had a story waiting to be told.

Not everyone, they’d insist. Not me. And so I’d spend a few minutes asking questions, listening to the answers, sharing the neat stuff. We never once failed to find a story worth hearing.

I still believe it. We’re walking story generators, each and every one of us. We live, we learn, we experience. In the words of the musical Hamilton, “We rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes.”

And a lot of times, we fail to notice it.

No surprise, really. We’re all busy living that life, after all. We have bills to pay and families to worry about and a million things knocking at our door (some of them with car warranty offers). It’s easy to get pulled into the illusion of sameness, to think that most things don’t really matter all that much.

That’s the power of a storyteller. To pull back the cloak of the ordinary and reveal the magic that we’ve forgotten to see.

Wonder and purpose. Humor and sympathy. The same no more, but truly unique.

Even in a forgotten bench player in a midsummer baseball game.

Even in a one-term president from an age no longer our own.

And yes, even in each of us.

**

And so, here’s to Scully and McCullough … no, that sounds like a law firm. To Vin and David. Here’s to the words they shaped and the moments they opened.

Thank you for the stories you saw and shared with all of us.

May your own stories never be forgotten.

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Lost Treasure

There’s no pile of riches. No treasure map. Certainly no One-Eyed Willie. But shiver me timbers if “The Goonies” didn’t actually have a glimmer of truth to it.

In case you missed the news, National Geographic recently reported that a dozen timbers from a 17th-century Spanish galleon – the Santo Cristo de Burgos – were found off the Oregon coast. That by itself would be pretty cool since the ship had disappeared after leaving the Philippines in 1693.

But the news coverage exploded thanks to a Hollywood connection. Tales of the shipwreck survived among the Native Americans, with later settlers spinning off legends of sunken treasure. Those in turn inspired Steven Spielberg to make “The Goonies,” the 1980s movie about children hunting pirate gold.

Confession time: I’m not a huge Goonies fan, which will probably cost me my “Child of the ‘80s” geek cred. But the connection between a 1690s ship and a 1980s film fascinates me.

You see, in the words of a young Sean Astin, “Goonies never say die!” And apparently, neither do stories.

In a day when so much can be researched, pinned down and verified, it’s easy to forget that stories have a life of their own. They’re strands of memory that defy the line between fact and fiction, often taking a seed of reality and spinning it into something unforgettable.

But as the legends and myths and heroes rise, the piece that started it all becomes a buried treasure:  lost, forgotten, maybe even denied to exist. Was there a British war leader that set the tales of King Arthur in motion? Or a highway robber with a sense of style that kindled later legends of Robin Hood? Even in less time, it’s easy for memory to change to make a better story: the psychologist Ulric Neisser famously told how he remembered hearing of Pearl Harbor attack during a radio baseball game , only to realize decades later that no one plays baseball in December.

So when the treasure of truth suddenly reappears, it’s almost magical. You can start to see how the story began and what grew from it, making both a little more wonderful. It might be the ancient city of Troy, rescued from mythical status by a 19th-century archaeologist. It might be the Santo Cristo, giving reality to a vessel that had long sailed the imagination.

And years, decades, centuries from now … it might even be us.

We live our stories now. Each of us shares and shapes memory, building our perceptions of the world into a personal tale that  explains the world around us. And even in our own lifetimes, we see those stories evolve and collide and change … though we don’t always realize how much they’ve changed until we find ourselves struggling with an inconvenient fact that doesn’t fit the narrative.

When our own time has passed, how much more will those stories transform?

It’s a little humbling to consider. And yet, it can be comforting as well. Even if our copious records become lost or meaningless to a far-future generation, something inspired by us may still fire the imagination and grow beyond what we can see.

And maybe, just maybe, some timbers of truth will wash onto the shore.

Or does that sound a little Goonie?

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Oh, G’s

Stephen Wilhite led an animated life.

OK, his is not a name that leaps to mind like Maya Angelou, Steve Jobs or (heaven help us) Justin Bieber. But if you’ve been online at all, you touched his work. Wilhite, who died recently at 74, invented the GIF, the moving photos that turned social media into a special effect out of Harry Potter.

He also, years after their invention, triggered one of the internet’s most long-running minor debates with just five words:

“It’s pronounced ‘jif,’ not ‘gif.’”

Yes, like the peanut butter. That had actually been part of the documentation for  the Graphics Interchange Format since day one … which of course most people never saw. And in a jiffy (or even a giffy), we reconfirmed two essential truths of our species.

First, that people will argue about absolutely ANYTHING, and the flames only get hotter as the stakes get lower. Online battles over the “proper” pronunciation of GIF still rage back and forth with the intensity of a Star Wars movie, joining such timeless classics as “that stupid call in the Super Bowl” and “who needs the Oxford comma, anyway?”

After a while, the exchange gets pretty predictable:

“Well, the G stands for ‘Graphic,’ so of course it’s a hard G!”

“The U in SCUBA stands for ‘Underwater,’ are you going to start saying scuh-ba?”

“It’s like ‘gap’ or ‘get!’”

“No, it’s like ‘genius’ or ‘giraffe.’”

“Jif sounds stupid!”

“You sound stupid!”

“NYAAAAAAH!”

Verily, this is a philosophical discourse that Socrates himself would envy.

The second essential truth is more subtle. Namely, that the meaning of an idea doesn’t start and stop with its creator.

Any literature fans reading this will recognize this immediately as “the death of the author,” Stripped of PhD language (you’re welcome), this basically says that the author isn’t the only one who gets to decide what a story’s about. Just as an invention can be created for one purpose and used for another, a story can change when it reaches the reader’s hands. Yes, the author has intents and purposes, but the reader brings their own experience to the tale, which may lead them to discover something quite different.

It’s a little scary and a little exciting. It means that reading a story or watching a movie isn’t just a matter of cracking a code (“what did they mean by that?”) but a process of adventure and discovery (“what will I find here?”) J.R.R. Tolkien called it the difference between allegory – a strict this-means-that definition by the writer – and applicability.

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence,” he wrote. “I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”

That’s challenging.

It means that while stories shape us, we can also shape them right back. It means that we don’t just have to accept ideas in couch-potato fashion. We can grapple with them, challenge them and take them in new directions. All sorts of concepts can be transformed this way, from fiction to ideologies to language itself.

So if 20 years down the road, the “hard G” folks win the GIF battle for good (or even for jood), it’s not an error or a crime. It just means the story wasn’t over.

It’s your tale. Choose as you will.

Just be gentle – or gracious – to those on the other side.

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Pieces of the Picture

As I studied the dumpster’s dimensions, for a moment I felt like Dad.

No, Dad isn’t in sanitation. But whenever me or my sisters moved, we always wanted Dad as crew chief. To him, moving trucks were three-dimensional puzzles, where everything could fit just right if you only found its place in the picture – and he ALWAYS found its place in the picture. It might have been because of his time aboard a submarine, where space is limited and precious. It might have just been a natural talent for order. Either way, it was awe-inspiring.

It’s also a talent that I’ve usually lacked. My awareness of spatial relationships has been approximate, to say the least. As for order … well, Heather and I used to joke that I was a “walking vortex of chaos,” and my notebook-filled newsroom desks usually told the tale well.

But this time, as we prepared for the Great Home and Yard Purge of 2021, everything seemed to click. Branches … go here. That worn-out armchair … goes there. Like Sherlock Holmes assembling a case, every piece had its perfect fit, which then created the space for the next one. It was a living game of Tetris.

And at the end of it all, with everything squared off and filled up, it felt enormously satisfying.

No surprise. Most of us like neatly fitting pictures.  We like symmetry and order and consistency. There’s an appeal to the movie plot that ties everything neatly together, or the room whose layout says “comfort” without a word, or the ideals of justice (so hard to achieve) that say we all have a place and a part to play.

Most of all, we like explanations. And that’s where things get tricky.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The quest for explanations and answers is what drives philosophy, science, even newspaper editorials. We ask questions, we examine the world and ourselves, and we try to put together an answer that fits what we see.

But the world is messy and our senses are limited. That means there are going to be ragged edges to all of this. If we’re honest and careful, we acknowledge that, letting an old answer die or evolve as our understanding gets better.

Or, as Yoda put it, we take the quicker, easier, more seductive path to the Dark Side. We make the answer fit, no matter what we have to do to get it there.

Forcing a fit is one thing when you’re breaking down dead branches to stack them neatly with your yard waste. But as an approach to understanding the world or other people, it’s outright harmful. It means ignoring what you don’t like, while inflating coincidence into significance. The story becomes more important than the reality, and challenging it becomes a personal offense.

It means never allowing yourself to be wrong. Which in turn means never allowing yourself to learn.

I mentioned Holmes earlier. The Great Detective once warned against twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. Things can fit – but if you start with the answer you want and cling to it no matter what, you won’t actually discover anything. Paradoxically, you have to be willing to back up to move forward.

Easy to say. Hard to do. Essential to learn.

If we keep testing, keep examining, keep questioning , we can get to the answers that satisfy instead of just the ones that feel good. We can share thoughts instead of butting heads.

And those other answers that we discarded along the way?

Well. there’s always a little more room in the dumpster.  

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An Andy-dote to Dystopia

My tastes in science fiction have gotten extremely Weir-d.

You probably know Andy Weir’s work, even if you don’t recognize his name immediately. It hasn’t been that long since his first novel, “The Martian,” was all over Hollywood. The tale of an astronaut stranded on the Red Planet captured movie audiences as surely as it held readers spellbound with his struggle to survive (while keeping his ability to wisecrack intact, naturally).

Well, now Andy’s back in a big way. His latest book, “Project Hail Mary,” pretty much hijacked me for the night –“Sleep? What’s that?” – and left me with no regrets for the extra caffeine in the morning. It’s hard to say too much without giving everything away, since the story reveals its secrets one layer at a time, but suffice to say that waking up on a spaceship without any memory of who you are or why you’re supposed to be there is one of those situations that makes being a Martian castaway look positively comfortable.

Why do I get so into Weir? Part of it is because he’s a “hard” science fiction writer in an age where that’s less common than it used to be, a teller of tales where science and engineering are both key plot points and useful tools. A friend joked that Andy tricks people into reading textbooks by disguising them as novels, which is more complimentary than it might sound. Put simply, he makes science cool.

But there’s more to it than that. For me, what really makes Andy Weir stand out is that his stories are hopeful.

In an age where dystopia sells, that’s no small thing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not interested in cotton-candy visions of the future where life is perfect and everyone has their own jet pack. (Well, maybe the jet pack.) In a world that’s gone through crisis after crisis – biological, ecological, political, social – stories of utopia sound hollow or even a little desperate. The trouble is that most dystopias are just upside-down utopias … which to me, makes them about as interesting.

I’m not alone in this. Isaac Asimov once wrote that the two were flip sides of the same coin: that the chorus of “everything is bad, bad, bad” was just as monotonous as the chorus of “everything is good, good, good.” Stories are about change, while utopias and dystopias are a sign of paralysis. An ideal society has no way to change except for the worse, while a dystopia has frequently lost the ability to change. (Indeed, the few in the genre that I do care for, such as “The Hunger Games,” are stories where the possibility of change and improvement are re-awakened.)

Dystopias have a use as tools – the alarm bell in the night of dangers that await if action isn’t taken. But a steady diet of them steals hope, implanting the idea that there is no action to be taken, simply pain to be endured.

And if that’s truly the case, what’s the point of a warning?

Especially when a story has the power to do so much more.

Stories are an evocation of who we are. They let us struggle with our fears and reach for our dreams. And yes, at their best, they teach hope … not that good stuff will always happen to those who deserve it, but that with work and effort, it’s possible to make things different.

That’s not the same as a guaranteed “happy ever after.” Some heroes fail. Some tales are tragedies. Some victories are won at a cost, for either the people involved or the world around them.  But the struggle is there. The possibility is there. In our stories and in ourselves.

In an often dark time, I’ll take that glimmer of light offered by Weir and others like him. It just may lead somewhere worth going.

And that’s an Andy thing to have.

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Weekend of Bernies

With a Sanders-stuffed world exploding into life online, I suddenly heard my brain echoing the rhythms of Dr. Seuss:

I’ve seen him in the Muppet box,

I’ve seen him painted by Bob Ross,

I’ve seen him in a Broadway show,

And galaxies ‘long time ago,’

I’ve seen those mittens here and there,

That Bernie’s nearly EVERYWHERE!

If you have no idea what I’m talking about , you probably haven’t been on social media much since the inauguration. In the hours after Joe Biden took the presidential oath and Amanda Gorman seared her verses into our imaginations, Sen. Bernie Sanders abruptly took over. Or at least his photo did.

The image of Sanders bundled tightly against the cold on a folding chair, wearing mask and mittens and an irascible expression, has suddenly become the latest internet meme, photoshopped into a zillion settings. The bridge of the Enterprise. The Iron Throne. The diner of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” A box of Sleepytime tea. On and on it goes, the sillier the better.

Some of my friends are reveling in finding new ones, while others are imitating “The Scream” as Bernie takes over their Facebook feeds. It’s a little like the ever-multiplying brooms in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” only without the theme music.

Wait. Do you think someone’s put Bernie in “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” yet? Hmmm …

For a punster like me, it’s been kind of fun to watch the silliness. The very definition of a meme, after all is a contagious thought, one that keeps finding new ways to evolve and spread. There’s a reason it’s called “going viral” – although, in this day and age, that’s probably not the most welcome image to evoke. (Apologies.)

It’ll subside eventually. They always do (even if they never quite die). But why is it catching on so hard right NOW?

Two reasons, I suspect.

The first is the simple one: it’s silly. And after weeks of tension in the national news, a lot of us needed something silly. Have you ever had that moment where life has been hitting so hard for so long … and then all of a sudden a stupid joke breaks through the walls like Kool-Aid Man at a birthday party, and you just can’t stop laughing?

But the real power, the one that gives it legs, is the mismatch of the original image.

Our brains latch on to incongruity – to things that don’t quite fit. And at a formal event, where everyone is focused on trying to be oh-so-elegant, it’s the ordinary sight that leaps out – the well-known face looking like Grandpa who’s just checked in from his daily errands, waiting for the school band concert to finish up already so everyone can go inside and get warm.

That sort of mismatch  is a powerful hook for any story.

It’s why the original Star Wars begins, not with a mighty hero, but with a robot butler and his mechanic friend who suddenly acquire the information that could save the galaxy.

It’s why The Lord of the Rings puts the world’s future in the hands of an obscure hobbit.

It’s why comedies, tragedies and horror stories across the ages have reveled in bringing together the two people who must NOT meet. It creates tension and opens up possibilities.

What’s more, that’s true in the real world as well.

When we break up old patterns and jar ourselves out of ruts, we let ourselves see the world again. We take a fresh look at things that have become familiar. It lets us invent, create, experience. It even helps us hold others accountable as we look at a situation and ask “Why doesn’t this fit?”

So yes, it’s a silly meme. But the power that makes it work is something quite real. Even wonderful.

So go on. Enjoy (or endure) it while it lasts.

Bern, baby, Bern.

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A Magical Lesson

“You see a beautiful ballroom, decorated for a feast or party of some kind. Music is playing, but you can’t see from where. In the center of the room, a man and woman dressed in clothes from 300 years ago are dancing, you think you can see through them. What do you do?”

My nephew Gil considered the situation. Then conferred briefly with his mom and Heather. Even for a bold Elven adventurer, this was going to be tricky.

On the other end of the webcam, 1,300 miles away, I smiled. Not the “gotcha” smile of the devious Dungeon Master. But the nostalgic smile of a proud uncle.

A new adventure had truly begun.

My sister likes to say that Gil and I have a lot in common. He’s a big reader on every topic imaginable. He loves good games and bad jokes and weird facts. He even started learning piano after fooling around with the one at our house for the first time.

Now he’s taken another step in the Déjà Vu Chronicles. Gil has discovered fantasy roleplaying, the world of broad imaginations and funny-shaped dice. Not only that, he’s starting at just about the same age I did.

Did someone cast a flashback spell when I wasn’t looking?

My own adventures started in fourth grade, fueled by a love of “The Hobbit” and curiosity about a game I’d seen mentioned in comic books and “E.T.” I quickly fell in love. I mean, I’d already been creating my own stories for fun and this was just the next step, right? (The fact that calculating experience points gave a boost to my math skills – which, frankly, needed all the help they could get – was an unforeseen bonus.)

Gil, likewise, discovered the games in his own reading and wanted to know more. His mom told him “You should really ask Uncle Scott.”

I’m sure she was barely hiding a smile the whole time.

It’s been exciting to see him learn the same lessons I did: the ones about cooperation, creativity, planning and why it’s a really good idea to avoid a room full of green slime. But the most exciting one has come from four words, repeated over and over again.

“I check it out.”

Whether from his reading or his own intuition, Gil has decided that anything could be more than meets the eye. So his character checks for traps. For secret doors. For hidden objects and lurking spiders. If a room the size of a closet holds a spyhole and a single wooden stool, the first words will be “I check out the stool.”

In this day and age, I can’t think of a more valuable reflex to train.

We live in a world where assumptions are easy and conspiracy theories streak across the internet at warp speed. We’ve seen – or been! – the friend who swallowed a story whole because it fit what they already believed, even when 30 seconds on Google would blow it up like the Death Star. After all, why disturb a beautiful theory with the facts?

With so much coming at us, checking it out is vital. And it’s usually not as hard as it sounds. But the hardest step is to realize that something needs checking – that our own assumptions and beliefs might actually be wrong. That requires humility, reflection, and a willingness to learn.

It’s not as glamorous as stubbornly holding your position at all costs and feeling like a hero. But it’s better for all of us in the long run. And if some magic and monsters can help ingrain that in my nephew, then bring on the quest.

It’s adventure time.

Let’s have a ball.