Miasmatic Review

Kids and their jokes.

When I was a near perfect child. Rarely did I ever do anything wrong. Occasionally I would misbehave a little, but nothing that would embarrass my parents. Unfortunately I had a warped sense of humor. At times I would come up with something that was humorous to me, but would end up backfiring on me.

When I was in High School I bought a set of three six-sided loaded dice that would roll sixes almost every time. Unless my buddy Moritz rolled them, then he would get ones. The reason behind these dice was so that when rolling up a Dungeons and Dragons character, you would get a score of 18, the highest possible roll for each attribute. Yea, I know, I’ve come to terms with my geekyness. Of course any time I tried to use them in a game someone would notice and they where banned from play. Thus I ended up keeping them separate from the rest of my dice.

My parents, mainly my mother, are very religious. They are die-hard Lutherans and don’t take to joking about god, religion or anything related. One does not challenge my parents’ values and morals in their homes, many of my friends will attest to this. My parents are practical in their views however. They did not view Dungeons and Dragons as satanic or the devils work. They saw it to be just the game that it is. There were no issues with me playing D&D or buying the books or other tools of the game. I was even allowed to host gaming sessions at the house. (YEAH YEAH YEAH, Geek, I’ve got it!).

However, if you mix the facts above into one incident, you have a bad situation in the making. Oh, I need to add one more fact to the mix. My mother has run a daycare out of the house since before I was born. She still does.

It was over the summer and the day care kids would roam all over the house. Occasionally one of the older kids (between 6-12) would wander into my room when I was there. Depending on my mood I would sometimes I would talk with them or let them play with some of my stuff. One day I was feeling a little mischievous when one of the older kids walked into my room. I had been putting away my D&D stuff. He picked up my dice and started playing with them. It didn’t take him long to notice that three of them rolled sixes all the time.

This 10-year-old boy was fascinated and wanted to know how they did that. Looking at them, I picked up the three dice and rolled them over and over, always rolling 18. After a couple of rolls I explained to him, “These are my satanic dice. You can tell because they always roll 6-6-6.” At that point my mother flies into my room and screams “Contagion D Smartarse give me those dice right now! DO NOT TELL THE KIDS STUFF LIKE THAT! These dice are now mine and you are NEVER getting them back. Lil' traumatized Tommy (He was brought up die-hard Catholic), don’t listen to Contagion. He is being mean and telling stories.”

I ended up getting those dice back about two weeks later. I found where she put them and reacquired them. They are still in my possession, and I know exactly where they are.

I hadn’t thought about this story for years. But something happened today to remind me. One of the ladies I work with was telling a story of something her son had done the previous day in school, Catholic School. He had found a sticker at the mall that was a pentagram. He thought it would be funny to place it on a bible and take it to school and try to convince the other kids it was a “Satanic Bible”.

Hey, at least I didn’t get suspended… well at least not for that stunt.