Noise in the Shape of Writing

I would have never thought I'd be saying those particular words to my 8-year-old daughter. But I digress...

(and yes, if you are sick of hearing about my daughter then you'd best be clicking one of the links to the right or switching over to your other friends' blogs)

Yes folks. A scant few weeks after attaining Holy Grail #2 ("Making Texas Hold Em my daughter's favorite game of all time"), I have moved on to Holy Grail #3.

I have taught her how to play Craps... and she loves it!

We began by betting on the Pass Line. I showed her how to roll, set her point, make her point, and even place odds (though she's sketchy on that). I even taught her the Field, Don't Pass and all the hard ways. At one point, she asked me what placing a bet on "Come" meant. I told her it was too complicated and she waived my concerns away. "I think I will understand it, Daddy. I figured out everything else on the board, didn't I?"

She certainly had, so there was no way around it. "It's like rolling your first roll in the middle of someone elses series of rolls. You get to pretend that it's YOUR first roll and then you get your own point that no one else has." She didn't miss a beat. "I get it," she says. "So how do you know which point is yours? Where does your bet go?"

Amazing. For a few days, all she wanted to play was Craps. BTW, I have a large table and a large Craps "felt" upstairs, so it was almost like Vegas, especialy when I constructed a miniature "wall" out of videotapes so the dice wouldn't fly off the edge. I have a croupier stick, too, which she loves to swish about... collecting the dice... pushing them towards me... pulling my losing bets away from me. She has a job in Vegas someday if she wants it.

But Craps wasn't the Holy Grail. (Psyche!)

The next day, she said she had a surprise. She wanted me to teach her something. I feared the worst... I reached for the "Where Did I Come From" book. You know the one... with the happy little sperm on the cover and the funny naked people inside. But she instead pointed at my huge Dungeons & Dragons collection. "I want you to teach me Dungeons and Dragons."

Oh, the joy on my face. You see, I had decided early on that I would not force D&D on her. That would certatinly drive her away from it. Instead, we started on the gateway games... Tunnels & Trolls and Choose Your own Adventure books.

And it had paid off. Heck, she even asked to go through my favorite module... I3: Pharaoh! I showed her how to roll a character... we grabbed an old sheet that still had a list of equipment and skills on it, and we went through about 3 rooms from a random page of the map. Just enough to get her a feel for it but not getting into all the "campaign level" stuff. You know, starting with the guts: combat!

We rolled some 20-siders for to-hit rolls, some 10-siders for damage, some six siders for monster attack damage. And then she asked about magic. He he he! Handing her the Players Handbook list of Magic User spells was like offering crack cocaine to a high schooler at her first college frat party. (I imagine).

Man, the look on her face as she perused each level of increasingly Monty Hall spells... Why, it was like.. my own face at about age 11 (I was late to the game). When her eyes lit upon "Power Word: Kill" I though they could get no wider (but then again, I had forgotten about "Time Stop"). "You can stop time??!! I want to be a Magic User!" And so, an adventurer is born.

But D&D wasn't the Holy Grail either. (Suspense is a bitch, I know.)

The very next day I decided that I deserved a break, so I gave myself a treat of a few hours of Halo. Aha!

Yes folks, my 8-yr-old daughter is now a 100% bonafide First Person Shooter freak. She will do ANYTHING (eat her vegetables, do her homework early, clean her room) just to play a few more minutes of Halo. Halo in the morning, Halo in the afternoon, Halo before bed.

And by now, you all know the chorus... "And she's pretty damned good at it!"

Covenant don't stand a chance. Of course, when the chelatinous plating starts flying and her hit points take a precipitous dive, she does tend to freak out. But, who wouldn't... those grunts and hunters can come out of nowhere if your nose is burried in a sniper scope.

And now you know whence came the name of this post.

Pat.