Tales of the Basement Freighter

At one point at yesterday’s party I found myself in the basement with four small children, two brothers (one three years old, one six) and a brother and sister (he’s three, she’s six). These pairs of siblings had never met before, but the out-of-town guest of honor for the party had recently reconnected with the mother of the two boys and invited her along – which was fine by me, devout believer in the equivalence of The more and The merrier that I am. The kids got along great, and I was chaperoning them in the basement just to make sure that none of them got intrepid enough to explore The Pirate Bar.

Yes, I have a pirate bar in my basement. When my Little Bro was done with the Army and not yet employed in the private sector, and he was living with my mom and step-father, and my step-father was home on long-term disability, Little Bro and step-father decided to build me a pirate bar for Christmas because I made an offhand comment about wanting one. SOMEDAY. Like you might say someday you want a vintage jukebox for your rec room, or you look forward to someday being old enough to wear melon-colored sansabelt slacks in public. The bar is a thing of beauty, designed to look like the broadside of a ship, with a laminated top surface decorated like a treasure map. It weighs over two hundred pounds, and I have no idea how I’m going to move it when we outgrow our townhouse, but I really do love it. And I’ve put it to good use at many a hard-drinking party in the misty past. It is well stocked. I could wipe out an infestation of three-to-six-year-olds with just the volume of brown liquor alone. So, you know, my homeowner’s liability cap only being so high, I thought I should keep an eye on the rambunctious younguns.

So I kept them out of the booze but I did give them some paper pirate hats and plastic hooks left over from a previous party, and they all proceeded to pretend the entire basement was one big pirate ship and everyone had specific roles and therefore specific seats on the futon or the easy chair or whathaveyou. (I found that to be very Star Trek, but I didn’t pry as to where the kids got that idea.) I was “the cook” because I was standing behind the bar.


Close enough. Anyway, have you ever tried to keep up with an extemporizing six year old? I have found that the best thing to do is basically agree with everything they say. If a six year old tells you that it is time to take the pirate ship to A-Speed, then you might as well hold on and holler like you’re on a roller coaster until he says stop, and if he immediately announces the ship is going to go A-Speed again, but this time flying, because there are giant shark-eating land worms blocking the beach where the ship had landed, then you holler again.

You would think that, given my comic book and action figure collections and the sundry other ways in which I am a completely typical Gen X-er enjoying a never-ending adolescence, I would have nothing but eager anticipation for my own son’s development into a three-to-six-year-old who plays crazy imaginary games, but I actually worry about it sometimes. Because for as long as I can remember I have been obsessing over the rules of games, from the exhaustively nerdy arcane of something like D&D to the competitive strategies of Dreamblade or Heroclix to the sugarplum fairy dancing statistics of pro sports. If you want to know how many points of damage a cockatrice can dish out, or what combos are no longer tournament legal, I'm your geek. This is what geeks do; even when we make things up as we go along, its always within a rigid framework that can inspire schism-inducing arguments of interpretation. I wonder sometimes if I still have the capacity to play non-structured open-ended silly freeform games. Based on yesterday’s pirate adventures, I can apparently do it, but I do well to stay out of the way and follow where small children lead me. But that’s probably good enough.

At a different point in the afternoon, upstairs with the rest of the guests, I was talking to one of the three year old boys and he looked at me with an utterly deadpan expression and informed me: “You. Talk. VERY. Loud.” And I cannot argue with that – I absolutely do. But to be told this by a three year old was hilariously humbling.

The party itself was successful in that a good time was had by all, and even made me feel pretty good about living in northern Virginia, because our out-of-town friends brought beer from Total Wine and Beverage, a store which they had never heard of before because apparently New York City lacks that particular chain. I was happy for my friends that they got to experience the majesty of Total, and even happier for myself that I have one within five minutes of home. The beer they brought was good, too (although to be honest it takes a fairly disastrous brew for me to dislike a beer) - a Magic Hat seasonal called Roxy Rolles, and a microbrew flavor called The Raven Special Lager. Recommended!