It’s so easy to get lost in a tunnel.

Bullgrit

I spent all day last Saturday with my brother. During that day, even with all the family stuff going on, we managed a good deal of just him and me time. It’s been a long while since we had such a chance.

Every time we get this kind of opportunity to catch up with each other, I realize just how much he doesn’t know about me. Most of what he “knows” about me is far out of date, or is extrapolation from the few times we’ve gotten together in our adult lives. The old info he has about me is 20 years past or more. The extrapolations are based on rare visits that are, by definition, highly unusual situations.

For instance, he thinks I dress up for work — slacks and button-up shirts. (I think the only reason he doesn’t include a tie in my attire is because I’ve said in this blog that I don’t wear them.) He even commented, “You’ve always dressed like Dad, even when you weren’t a dad yourself.”

Wha-huh?

(Lest anyone think this particular comment bothered me — it didn’t/doesn’t; it does surprise me — let me say I’m only singling in on this because it is the easiest to illustrate how wrong it is.)

I think this idea that I used to dress in slacks and button-up shirts is based on: the last times brogrit ever saw me “at work” was when I was working in electonics retail back in college.

I think the idea that I currently dress in slacks and button-up shirts is based on: he apparently thinks that working, now, in a “professional office” environment means one dresses up “professionally.”

My daily attire is now what it has been for most of my life: jeans and t-shirts. Even at my office. This is the standard for most places I’ve worked over the past many years. Every once in a while I need to wear something dressy, (up to a suit and tie), for some rare customer meeting. But that’s an exception, far from the norm.

How brogrit has seen me dressed on a weekend, (the usual time when we manage to get together), is pretty much how I dress Monday through Friday, too. It never dawned on me that he thought my weekday attire would be different.

And even when I worked retail in college, (and waited tables in high school), I didn’t dress “like Dad” when I wasn’t at work. But I realize, now that I think about it, that was how brogrit saw me when he visited me in my college town. He’d come into town, and stop by the retail store to see me. When I got off work, we’d go hang out somehow, and I’d be in my slacks and button-up shirt. (The tie would be removed.) But that’s just because we’d leave directly from my work.

So, based on the usual situation that he saw me, (at retail work), during my college days, and based on what he must see of other folks who work in “professional office buildings,” I can see how he would think I dress up normally.

But this is an example of how he doesn’t know much about me and my life, really. If he has this totally erroneous and backward vision of something as mundane as my normal dress, think of how many other ideas he has wrong about my life. Every time we have our little get togethers, it’s revealed how much he really doesn’t know about me — at least the me in the past 20 years or so.

Bullgrit

Way back in my earliest days of D&D (age 13-14), I was not especially well read or worldly — I was an average teenager of 1980. An average teenager in a small town, educated in a county public school.

In reading D&D books back in the day, especially those written by E. Gary Gygax, I often came across a reference to some archaic bit of knowledge/information that I had never heard of. We didn’t have the Internet or Wikipedia to easily look up such things, so many times the reference just got missed or given an odd look and skipped.

Usually this wasn’t a serious problem, but sometimes not knowing or understanding the reference meant I had an unclear or erroneous idea of how to handle the information while running a game as a DM.

For instance:

In the module The Keep on the Borderlands, there’s the false rumor that the PCs might have heard:

“Bree-Yark” is goblin-language for “We surrender”!

Later in the module, in the info for the goblin lair:

If there is a cry of “BREE-YARK” (similar to “Hey Rube!”) . . .

I had never heard of “Hey Rube!” I had no idea what this meant. I took the reference to mean that “Bree Yark” was pronounced as “hay ruub” — and this made no sense to me.

Eventually, through talking with other D&D players, I figured out what this reference actually meant, but it was about 30 years after first reading that text that I ever saw any other reference to “Hey Rube!” My oldest son was watching a Scooby Doo episode where the gang is at a circus, and the ring master called out, “Hey Rube!” when a scheme was going down. I remember saying out loud (to my son’s confusion), “So that’s how it works.”

In the module Secret of the Slavers Stockade, the text mentions a “dog-eared deck of cards” on a table. I had never heard of anything “dog-eared,” and since the cards belonged to a bunch of terrible and nasty hobgoblins, I assumed the cards were actually made of dogs’ ears. Fortunately, I didn’t go 30 years before learning what this meant.

Now, I did learn a lot of new words from D&D books (especially EGG’s work), and I started reading more due to D&D. But thinking back, it is kind of curious how the early material (especially EGG’s) seemed to be written for older, better read, and more worldly/knowledgeable readers. It’s like EGG didn’t even consider that 10-14 year old kids would be reading the material (even the Basic D&D material), and wouldn’t get much of the archaic references. (Thank goodness for some of the glossaries.)

Now adays, from what I’ve seen in the current (since 2000) books, things like “Hey Rube” and “dog-eared” would be edited to something like “alarm” and “well-worn.”

Bullgrit

When I was in high school, (grad 1985), my school bus was number 127.

I have no idea how long the state keeps buses in operation, or how many buses throughout the state may have the same number. But when I saw this one, it made me smile. No matter how small the chance, I like to think this is actually the same bus I rode to school in when I was 13-17 years old.

Bullgrit