Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons (4 page)

Maybe you don't need all of these self-help books or nagging mothers or guru-like talk show hosts smiling at you from the covers of their eponymous magazines. If you want to be enlightened; popular; fabulously fit; a better lover; a great friend; an influential speaker; a wealthy raiser of happy, healthy, spiritually enlightened children with nice muscle tone and good teeth, then you, my friend, need to do nothing else than play Dungeons & Dragons.

Right?

Possibly?

Worth a shot?

If this little thought nugget were to blossom into, say, oh, I don't know, a book, then I obviously needed evidence to back up my claim. And I would need to get familiar with my competition. As soon as I got home I went in search of all the books Judy sent me—the ones I used for end tables, the ones under the bed. The ones I recently wrapped up to re-gift for friends with less “thoughtful” mothers. And I got to reading. For real this time. Not just the funny parts out loud to my friends at dinner parties. Okay, maybe “read” is a bit misleading. I read book jackets and cover copy. I read reviews on Amazon. I scanned Wikipedia pages. I read the authors' blogs and the blogs of people who gave the books glowing reviews. If Dan S. from Macon, Georgia, can break free from emotional eating and Glenda D. from Valencia, California, can finally conquer her emotional clutter and Stephanie T. from Santa Fe, New Mexico, has finally found her soul mate (can your soul mate be an inanimate object like, say, a turquoise ring? Hmm … I may have to read this one), then who's to say a little quality time in your cousin's crawl space with some oddly shaped dice and your seventh-grade imagination couldn't do the same years and years later?

For once, Judy and I agreed on the topic of self-help. You can improve your well-being by reading a book:
The Player's Handbook, The Dungeon Master's Guide
, maybe even
Tomb of Horrors.
That's the thing about D&D. It changes lives. And it was about to change mine.

Roll for initiative, Universe.

I was six years old when I had my first existential crisis. In my mind, God was a cowboy. I don't know why I saw him this way as I didn't know any cowboys, didn't grow up on a farm, and, other than the clothing worn by my Western Barbie, I wasn't particularly fond of big hats and pointy boots. Yet the God I believed in was a giant, bandana-wearing wrangler in a ten-gallon hat. I remember lying in the grass in the backyard and looking up at the clouds.

“God,” I said. “Show me your cowboy boot.”

Yes, even six-year-olds need proof of existence. And to be fair, I wasn't asking for miracles. I just wanted to see the tip of his boot or a shiny spur poke through the gauzy whiteness of the clouds.

I waited, maybe an hour. Maybe ten minutes. To a six-year-old it felt like a lifetime willing that giant in brown leather to wink down at me. But alas, not so much as a sunbeam poked through the clouds. I was highly disappointed. I mean, I knew God was busy and all, but I was always told he had time enough for all of us. No doubt there were people asking him to cure cancers or snuff out house fires or find loved ones who were lost at sea. As far as I was concerned, my request was an easy one.

“Well, I guess you don't really exist,” I sighed. Then I called Woofie, my imaginary German shepherd over and went inside for a Ring Ding.

“What's the matter?” Judy asked when she came into the kitchen and saw me face down in plastic wrap and white cream.

Yes, even at six years old, I turned to chocolate when I was having a bad day. Good thing I didn't have a credit card.

“God ignored me,” I said. “And now I'm going to ignore him. Forever.”

The following Sunday, my brother Mike and I were enrolled in Sunday school.

We went to church at 10:00 a.m. (got to respect a parish that doesn't open its doors before double digits) and Sunday school at 11:00. If there is a hell I'm sure that whole pushing Heather Hoffman in the slush on picture day in fourth grade and playing Mommie Dearest with my seven-year-old cousin (I was Joan, of course) had already granted me a one-way ticket there, so I'm just going to say this: I hated it. There's not enough Chips Ahoy and Hawaiian Punch that could have made those sixty minutes bearable. The only saving grace was that Mike and I were in the same class. Together we were a Bible-studying Heckle and Jeckle. We were like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, questioning the teacher's teachings. Laughing inappropriately. Mike used me as his mouthpiece when he wanted more cookies or answers to things like, “Were apples the only thing to eat in the garden? Apples? Really?” (Mike's not a fruit guy.) Or, “Didn't Noah have any human friends? Why did he just save the animals?”
(Noah was my favorite Bible character, by the way. I could totally relate to only saving animals.)

From 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Judy and the rest of the moms who had kids in Sunday school met in the back room of the Tally Ho diner across the street. There they could be found smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee. I know this because Mike and I left class one Sunday under the guise of having the stomach flu, claiming we needed to use the facilities. Mike was really good at faking the heaves. We walked across the street to the Tally Ho.

“What are you doing here?” Judy asked when she saw Mike and me meander around the tables and chairs strewn with peacoats and purses. “You're supposed to be in class.”

Mike took a slab of bacon from her plate.

“It's booooooooooooring!” I told her. “Can I have a cigarette?”

We did the whole Sunday school thing every week for about five years. (Give or take a few Sundays when I was excused because I “passed out” in church. It was a phase and about forty thousand CT scans said as much, but once I learned it would get me out of Sunday school, I staged a few episodes. See? Going to hell.)

A few years later we took our first communion (wine!) and a couple years after that we were confirmed (cash!). I'm sure the official meaning of “confirmation” isn't “stop going to church now,” but that's what it meant for us. Perhaps Judy was hoping we wouldn't need her throwing the covers off our sleeping bodies every Sunday to get up and go. Or maybe it had something to do with the Tally Ho burning down. I'm just saying …

Back then I dreaded Sundays, but now I look back with some gratitude. I'm glad Judy tried to instill a sense of religion in us. Other than the fact that we were kids and therefore couldn't say no to her, Judy never forced it on us. It was more of a canvas for us to expand (or not) upon.