Fighting monsters, bad guys may lead to career in journalism

My son, Braden, built a snow fort with me Sunday. Once built, we both spent time in it shooting imaginary monsters and bad guys. Although he’s only 3, Braden is already a big fan of the same things I liked as a kid, and shooting imaginary monsters and bad guys was one of my favorite pastimes.
As a young boy, I spent hours at a time pretending I was a hero who needed to rescue others by shooting their captors or cutting them down with my lightsabre. Many times I was a star-fighter pilot who needed to destroy the star-ships that were wreaking havoc for the good people of this world and other planets.
Basically, I combined the plots of all the television shows, movies and comic books that I loved – “Star Wars,” “Transformers,” “He-Man,” “Go-Bots,” “G.I. Joe,” “Spider-Man,” “Superman,” “Tarzan,” “The A-Team,” “V,” “Terminator,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Land of the Lost,” “The Six Million Dollar Man,” “The Smurfs” (don’t ask) – and made them my own. I acted out every character, unless I had the fortune of having a friend over who could take on some of the roles, and shut out the rest of the world while I lived out my childhood fantasies.
The commercial world sometimes inserted itself in my fantasy world by making toys, such as “Star Wars” figures and “Transformers” robots, that I used to help me act out the battles, heroics and other things that were raging in my mind. I amassed quite a collection of both, but all of them got plenty of play.
My world was probably similar to those of other boys my age at the time, but the big difference was mine came with sound effects – lots of them – that I made up and did on my own. Every laser that was shot came with a “bzzzewww” and every lightsabre that was swung came with a “waoooow.” Explosions, caused by lasers I shot that struck other star-ships or bad guys, sounded like “bghewww,” and my escaping star-ship made a “grrrwww” noise.
And all of these sound effects had unique motions that came with them that I made with my hands, mouth and face. For example, if there was an explosion I grabbed my hands together and pulled them apart with my fingers spread apart, while sounding out a “bghewww.”
I remember when I was older my parents referring to these many hours I spent playing like this as “making noises,” and looking back I’m surprised they let me, especially in public, because it must have made me, and them, look pretty foolish.
Sure, I was a kid doing a kid thing, but spending hours doing it without a care about the outside world had to make others think I was weird, especially when their children were running around playing with others in ways that most people deemed normal.
I didn’t do so because I was anti-social; I just thought my way of playing was more fun. I gladly played with other kids who wanted to play this way, but I had little interest in playing with monster trucks or toys that didn’t have some sort of make-believe aspect to them, which were the types of toys most of these kids played with. Why play real-life when make-believe was so much better?
This sort of thinking is probably why I’m a journalist today. I excelled at math and science, acing all of these classes in school, but I found the factual reality they are based in to be too boring. Instead, I liked the creative outlet writing allowed. When a teacher assigned the class to write a two-page story using all of our spelling words, I wrote 15 page epics using every spelling word we ever had.
One of my teachers saved one of these stories and gave it to me when I was an adult. It was about a bear attacking a camp my family and I were staying at with friends, and me coming to the rescue of everybody. In the end I was able to save the day and make the bear our friend.
When I read it now, I realize it’s utter garbage, but it serves as an important token to me of that creative spark that led me to where I am now.
Which brings me back to Braden and our day of shooting monsters and bad guys from our fort. Without any prompting on my part, he made hand motions and noises on his own while pretending to bring down our make-believe enemies.
He also likes the same movies, television shows and comic books I liked as a kid, especially since most of them are as popular today as when they were when I was younger, except Braden likes them at a younger age than I was when I first started getting into them.
I’m not going to do anything to prevent him from making a fool of himself while he’s playing, because it may define who he becomes later in life. For all I know, he could end up writing this column after I retire or leave this world. Or he could end up as a star-fighter in outer space taking on enemies that need to be destroyed to save mankind. Either one works for me.