Thursday, November 12 12:00 AM ET

Chicken Soup for the Geek Soul:
Father to Son

By Brian Briggs follow me on Twitter.

My father was a geek before being a geek was cool. He taught me the ways of the geek, and fully instilled the geek spirit in me. As I grew older I knew that when I had kids, I would share the same geek wisdom my father shared with me. Things don't always go according to plan.

I love my son very much, but he never wanted to be a geek. At three years old I sat him next to me in front of the television to watch episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek. Instead of paying attention, he plopped down on the floor and started playing with his Hot Wheels.

By age 6 I began to get worried, he showed no interest in science fiction or fantasy literature. I tried to read him The Lord of the Rings, but he kept falling asleep. Our pediatrician said he wasn't retarded, but I wasn't so sure.

I tried every trick I knew to try to get him to appreciate geek culture, reverse psychology, positive reinforcement, waterboarding. Nothing would work. He was one stubborn six year old.

By the time he had reached his teen years, I had given up. He went outside and played football with the neighbor kids while I sat in the basement painting my miniatures. I would do some role playing and pretend he was there sitting next to me.

"Are you sure you want to use that red on your Halfling rogue? It would be harder to stealth around with such a bright color on your cloak," I said to the empty chair.

Eventually, he grew up and left for college, and the distance between us grew deeper.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from my now college junior saying he had discovered this brand new game called World of Warcraft. He started playing it to impress a girl, but really enjoyed it. He said he was sad we didn't talk that much any more and wondered if I wanted to join him playing the game. We could use technology to reconnect.

I told him, "Yes" with more excitement in my voice than I expected. He said he had a 30th level Night Elf druid on the Arthas server and gave me his character's name.

I told him, "That's perfect, I'll meet you on the server tonight."

You can only imagine the depth of my joy as I spent four hours that evening corpse camping the little fucker with my 72nd level Tauren shaman. Horde ftw!