My teenage son got caught with a secret pally deck. Am I a miserable failure as a father and human being?
Last Tuesday, at about 9, I got a phone call from the local PD. My son was one of four teenage boys in a vehicle that was pulled over for suspiciously obeying all traffic laws. The police did a routine search of the vehicle, and while they did not find any drugs, alcohol, or weapons, they did find a paper grocery bag containing a mysterious challenger and over a dozen aggro decks. My son admitted that it was all his. They made him stomp on the cards and fling them off into the woods, gave him a warning, and called me.
While I am grateful that they didn't cite him for peasantry in a school zone, which they easily could have, I have to admit that I feel like I am responsible for this in some way. As a father, one likes to imagine that his kids are somehow better than those other kids that you hear about messing with zoo lock and crap, but that is not always the case. There were warning signs with my son, and not only did I miss them, I dismissed them.
In all honesty, he has probably been playing aggro since he was 12. I remember one time I took him his ritalin for the all-night LAN party he was participating in at his dirty friend's house over in the shantytown across the railroad tracks, and they were playing mech mage on ladder
"But Dad! It's free wins! There's no other way to win!"
How could I say no? He would be ridiculed and that damage to his ego just was not worth it to me at the time. I let him stay.
Fast-forward a couple of years, and I catch him sneaking a pair of mad scientists into the house. When I confronted him about it, he was ready with his excuses: "It's for freeze mage, I promise." "You really need them to pull ice barrier." "Lots of people play freeze” etc
I let it go.
But then other things started happening: his grades started falling, his vocabulary shrank, he started wearing hats at stupid angles and calling people "bro," he lost interest in girls and hygiene. He stopped programming, started reading Twilight, and I swear to God that I once heard Limp Bizkit coming from his room. One of his friends even told me that he told a joke from Two and a Half Men at school.
I ignored all of this, but I justified it at the time because I got all golden cards of my Randuin Wrynn deck looking glorious
One night, however, I caught him red-handed. I walked into his room and saw that he was playing Paladin, and something was off. He was holding repentance and Leeroy it was blindingly bad. I reprimanded him.
"Did I raise a moron? That’s a horrible midrange deck, let me fix it."
He just grumbled. I walked over to do it for him, and he attacked me. He hit me in the jaw, and then started pounding me in the face when I was on the ground. I managed to subdue him with some secret ninja moves I learned in my special forces days and found, to my horror, that he was not even playing midrange; he was playing secrets! I zip-tied him to his bed and ransacked his room looking for the other aggro decks. He laughed maniacally, and said I would never find it. I looked him dead in the eyes and said: "You have brought dishonor on our family. You will not move from this spot until you tell me where it is." He stared back and did not say a word. I punched him in his stupid face and ransacked the house looking for the his laptop. I found it hours later in the toolshed, rigged up to a wifi adapter and a car battery. I destroyed it right there, went up to my son's room brandishing the smashed piece of outdated filth, and said, "Never again." I left him tied up there for three days to prove my point.
Six months passed without further incident. He straightened up, quit drinking Monster, all that shit. I thought I had done my job, but no. I just gave him more of an incentive to hide this disgusting behavior.
Then this happened, and the proof is incontrovertible: my son is a peasant. And now I am at this crossroads: is my son a peasant despite me, or because of me? Did I getting legend on him too early? Was that full gold grinder mage on his 6th birthday really for him, or for me? Am I to blame for all of this?
No. It's all his fault. Hail the control decks master race, my son can die in a ditch.
