There Was A Time Before Helicopter Parents, When The Hobby Was Young. And So Were We...
Gaming allowed me a lot more freedom than most of my non-gaming peers.
Once parents got their head around the idea that their sons (it really was a male dominated hobby back then, so judge me not, Millennial cherubs) were not actually summoning up daemons in their bedrooms (a couple of years later when the hormones kicked in they probably would've preferred the infernal to the carnal) most gamers I met had a pretty easy time of it.
You see, at clubs and shows we were in the company of the true first generation, many of whom were parents themselves with young families. (Most didn't even muck about when they went away for a weekend with the club. I have a list of those in Sheffield who did, which can be yours for £5 in a plain envelope.)
In those days, we were not obsessed with every adult who spoke to a kid being a 'kiddy fiddler'. On the contrary they would have happily torn apart anyone with sweaty palms and a penchant for little girl's bicycle seats.
They would gladly (albeit sometimes with gritted teeth) take a couple of the junior gamers to a show in another city, dropping them off back home and maybe even popping in to chat with the parents of the kids and have a coffee and a Valium. If we messed about, then parents would not need to know, because we'd have the piss ripped out of us at the club for acting like twats. That was far worse.
At weekends, we went all over the city both shopping and browsing for games and models, but also to the houses of other gamers for 10 and 12 hour gaming sessions followed by sometimes two or three late night buses home unless a parent could be shanghai'd into picking up and delivering several hyperactive youths in the Rocker's uniform of tight jeans, patched denim jacket and varying amounts of patchouli oil.
By the age of 14 I was a three year veteran and a two or three bus ride followed by a walk through the red light area of Doncaster with Roger, Darren, Keith et al, was like a walk to the corner shop. Trust me, we were all streetwise back then because as we all knew, being a 'Hippy' on even the wrong 100 yards of street in Sheffield could get you seriously hurt. Thus our urban survival skills were well honed, and our white Hi-Tec 'Tec' basketball boots (Roger's had red flashes, mine blue - His were cooler according to the social rules of the day. Martin Lightowler I think also had blue...) were always properly laced for a fast acceleration out of a sticky situation.
I'd been all over the country both on day trips and for weekends with the wargames club, and the art of interpreting the arcane timetables of British Railways (This is the age of the train) was a life skill, you needed, if you were going to get to Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds (a real shit hole of a city back then and the one place where my parents insisted I checked in by pay phone from when I went there, and only ever with friends.) or Nottingham. Oddly Manchester was the only place where I nearly got a kicking - in the Arndale Centre after a trip to their GW (never as good as our own branch) which, was an essential pilgrimage and rite of passage.
I think that the only place that we really messed about was our local Games Workshop, managed at the time by Baccus Miniatures, High Poobah, Peter Berry, who ran a tight ship. I am sure that we must have been collectively responsible for some grey hairs along the way, because between trying to circumvent the rules regarding use of the noticeboard by the front counter, chatting up Lisa (we thought), avoiding getting leathered by Jo (bound to happen if we tried any 'funny stuff') and trying to be as cool as Pete & Chris who manned the figure bar (and of whom it is said, Pete Berry allowed a high degree of 'return fire orders' lest we drive them mad - and trust me, what I have since referred to as the 'Armstrong-Gilbride Method' could have a teenage youth literally in tears were they foolish enough to cross them. I did, and they did... But by Gygax, I'd love to experience one of those verbal crucifixatiuons again, because they helped make me (and I guess others too) the imbalanced and cynical bastard I am today - HUSSAH!
If Pete B, noticed you, you were on death row. Worse still, if Cy the store enforcer got his teeth into you, you were fucked. Phil tended to be less bothered with the youths who freqented the store. He was always pretty even tempered, and hung around in the computer section (yes they had a computer games section) and even looked professional. Oddly, in all the pre corporate years of GW, I generally only browsed down the left hand side of the store and stayed away from the books (That was what the Sheffield Space Centre and Methodist Book Shop were for) , but had I been less of a martinet, I could have probably got me a GW girlfriend, had I only been willing to cross mediums of media... Ah well.
My parents over the years must have spent some serious money on feeding ever-hungry gamers, as must Darren, Simon, Keith and Roger's. Darren Ashmore's Mum Sheila, like my own mum was forever calling half a dozen lads to come downstairs, inviting them to empty the larder. You could have fun with Darren, as he was vegetarian, and if his mum served us a ham sandwich we could get him into conniption fits by touching the condiment bottles to the surface of the ham. It was Martin Lightowler, who went to school with Daz, who got me into this habit and because Darren would get a real strop on, it was fun. However, if Darren was running the game, you had to think twice about where you put the sauce bottle as it were, leds he have an orc put it's mace somewhere you found unpleasant.
Also, as Darren was the one with the 48K ZX Spectrum and a game called 'Attic Attack' he could have his revenge at will...
I've noticed that whilst many of us have gone off and done our own things and become generally respectable adults, we've most not forgotten the youths we were. My wife and I got together a few years after this 'golden age' and she is still amazed how we can not see or speak to each other for a quarter of a century, and then just pick up in the same manner, albeit with sterner faces.
It's not a bad thing either, because in these days of middle age and the world being a far less fun place to negotiate, being able to 'socially downsize' is a useful coping mechanism. Oh sure, we can be all serious when the need arises, but a bit of good youthful repartee is a wonderful tonic for the soul.
For example, I mentioned to a certain friend formerly the owner of red flashed trainers, that I had bought a large flock of sheep along with my ECW army, and he has made several witty remarks about them including the statement that they are the only troops I have, able to stand up to a Royalist cavalry charge. We cause nobody harm with this, and if anyone should judge us by such banter, well, they can foxtrot oscar in my opinion.
It probably appears that our parents were uncaring as to our whereabouts, but in fact they were quite the opposite. We simply did not need 'helicopter parents'. We all knew and were reminded of the rules of engagement in a given theater, and were aware that the airdrops and airlifts would take place at a set time and place. If we were not there or broke the R.O.Es then we would suffer a parental airstrike, or in my case, do time in the glasshouse.
two weeks out of the loop with your peer group could seriously disrupt the group dynamics. Indeed, it was my detention at parental pleasure doing a 14 stretch on house arrest that led to me meeting Darren, and the now legendary exchange which began an almost 40 year friendship.
It was the abuse of the GW noticeboard which put Roger and I on a collision course to a similar deep friendship. I actually realised as I wrote this, that Roger was the first of my age group who was like me, interested in historical wargaming (OK, he has unnatural thoughts about Gilder Colonials and Napoleonics, but he's a year younger than I, and will grow out of it I'm sure) and to this day is the person I'd choose to play a historical game with, from those heady days of yore. Darren too, became a historical gamer and was one of the small number of my peers who went with me into ECW reenactment. My, those two don't half get my memories flooding back...
Sometimes, smallest and most absurd things can make the most difference. I've tried over the years to imagine how I'd have turned out were it not for that seemingly massive leap of faith our parents made, but after a few times waking at 1AM with a scream and in a sweat after dreaming of a life of such mundanity, I'm just relieved that I met such a bunch of insane, funny and true friends.
I just wish I'd been able to put those feelings into words a hell of a lot sooner.
TTFN
Once parents got their head around the idea that their sons (it really was a male dominated hobby back then, so judge me not, Millennial cherubs) were not actually summoning up daemons in their bedrooms (a couple of years later when the hormones kicked in they probably would've preferred the infernal to the carnal) most gamers I met had a pretty easy time of it.
You see, at clubs and shows we were in the company of the true first generation, many of whom were parents themselves with young families. (Most didn't even muck about when they went away for a weekend with the club. I have a list of those in Sheffield who did, which can be yours for £5 in a plain envelope.)
In those days, we were not obsessed with every adult who spoke to a kid being a 'kiddy fiddler'. On the contrary they would have happily torn apart anyone with sweaty palms and a penchant for little girl's bicycle seats.
They would gladly (albeit sometimes with gritted teeth) take a couple of the junior gamers to a show in another city, dropping them off back home and maybe even popping in to chat with the parents of the kids and have a coffee and a Valium. If we messed about, then parents would not need to know, because we'd have the piss ripped out of us at the club for acting like twats. That was far worse.
At weekends, we went all over the city both shopping and browsing for games and models, but also to the houses of other gamers for 10 and 12 hour gaming sessions followed by sometimes two or three late night buses home unless a parent could be shanghai'd into picking up and delivering several hyperactive youths in the Rocker's uniform of tight jeans, patched denim jacket and varying amounts of patchouli oil.
By the age of 14 I was a three year veteran and a two or three bus ride followed by a walk through the red light area of Doncaster with Roger, Darren, Keith et al, was like a walk to the corner shop. Trust me, we were all streetwise back then because as we all knew, being a 'Hippy' on even the wrong 100 yards of street in Sheffield could get you seriously hurt. Thus our urban survival skills were well honed, and our white Hi-Tec 'Tec' basketball boots (Roger's had red flashes, mine blue - His were cooler according to the social rules of the day. Martin Lightowler I think also had blue...) were always properly laced for a fast acceleration out of a sticky situation.
I'd been all over the country both on day trips and for weekends with the wargames club, and the art of interpreting the arcane timetables of British Railways (This is the age of the train) was a life skill, you needed, if you were going to get to Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds (a real shit hole of a city back then and the one place where my parents insisted I checked in by pay phone from when I went there, and only ever with friends.) or Nottingham. Oddly Manchester was the only place where I nearly got a kicking - in the Arndale Centre after a trip to their GW (never as good as our own branch) which, was an essential pilgrimage and rite of passage.
I think that the only place that we really messed about was our local Games Workshop, managed at the time by Baccus Miniatures, High Poobah, Peter Berry, who ran a tight ship. I am sure that we must have been collectively responsible for some grey hairs along the way, because between trying to circumvent the rules regarding use of the noticeboard by the front counter, chatting up Lisa (we thought), avoiding getting leathered by Jo (bound to happen if we tried any 'funny stuff') and trying to be as cool as Pete & Chris who manned the figure bar (and of whom it is said, Pete Berry allowed a high degree of 'return fire orders' lest we drive them mad - and trust me, what I have since referred to as the 'Armstrong-Gilbride Method' could have a teenage youth literally in tears were they foolish enough to cross them. I did, and they did... But by Gygax, I'd love to experience one of those verbal crucifixatiuons again, because they helped make me (and I guess others too) the imbalanced and cynical bastard I am today - HUSSAH!
If Pete B, noticed you, you were on death row. Worse still, if Cy the store enforcer got his teeth into you, you were fucked. Phil tended to be less bothered with the youths who freqented the store. He was always pretty even tempered, and hung around in the computer section (yes they had a computer games section) and even looked professional. Oddly, in all the pre corporate years of GW, I generally only browsed down the left hand side of the store and stayed away from the books (That was what the Sheffield Space Centre and Methodist Book Shop were for) , but had I been less of a martinet, I could have probably got me a GW girlfriend, had I only been willing to cross mediums of media... Ah well.
My parents over the years must have spent some serious money on feeding ever-hungry gamers, as must Darren, Simon, Keith and Roger's. Darren Ashmore's Mum Sheila, like my own mum was forever calling half a dozen lads to come downstairs, inviting them to empty the larder. You could have fun with Darren, as he was vegetarian, and if his mum served us a ham sandwich we could get him into conniption fits by touching the condiment bottles to the surface of the ham. It was Martin Lightowler, who went to school with Daz, who got me into this habit and because Darren would get a real strop on, it was fun. However, if Darren was running the game, you had to think twice about where you put the sauce bottle as it were, leds he have an orc put it's mace somewhere you found unpleasant.
Also, as Darren was the one with the 48K ZX Spectrum and a game called 'Attic Attack' he could have his revenge at will...
I've noticed that whilst many of us have gone off and done our own things and become generally respectable adults, we've most not forgotten the youths we were. My wife and I got together a few years after this 'golden age' and she is still amazed how we can not see or speak to each other for a quarter of a century, and then just pick up in the same manner, albeit with sterner faces.
It's not a bad thing either, because in these days of middle age and the world being a far less fun place to negotiate, being able to 'socially downsize' is a useful coping mechanism. Oh sure, we can be all serious when the need arises, but a bit of good youthful repartee is a wonderful tonic for the soul.
For example, I mentioned to a certain friend formerly the owner of red flashed trainers, that I had bought a large flock of sheep along with my ECW army, and he has made several witty remarks about them including the statement that they are the only troops I have, able to stand up to a Royalist cavalry charge. We cause nobody harm with this, and if anyone should judge us by such banter, well, they can foxtrot oscar in my opinion.
It probably appears that our parents were uncaring as to our whereabouts, but in fact they were quite the opposite. We simply did not need 'helicopter parents'. We all knew and were reminded of the rules of engagement in a given theater, and were aware that the airdrops and airlifts would take place at a set time and place. If we were not there or broke the R.O.Es then we would suffer a parental airstrike, or in my case, do time in the glasshouse.
two weeks out of the loop with your peer group could seriously disrupt the group dynamics. Indeed, it was my detention at parental pleasure doing a 14 stretch on house arrest that led to me meeting Darren, and the now legendary exchange which began an almost 40 year friendship.
It was the abuse of the GW noticeboard which put Roger and I on a collision course to a similar deep friendship. I actually realised as I wrote this, that Roger was the first of my age group who was like me, interested in historical wargaming (OK, he has unnatural thoughts about Gilder Colonials and Napoleonics, but he's a year younger than I, and will grow out of it I'm sure) and to this day is the person I'd choose to play a historical game with, from those heady days of yore. Darren too, became a historical gamer and was one of the small number of my peers who went with me into ECW reenactment. My, those two don't half get my memories flooding back...
Sometimes, smallest and most absurd things can make the most difference. I've tried over the years to imagine how I'd have turned out were it not for that seemingly massive leap of faith our parents made, but after a few times waking at 1AM with a scream and in a sweat after dreaming of a life of such mundanity, I'm just relieved that I met such a bunch of insane, funny and true friends.
I just wish I'd been able to put those feelings into words a hell of a lot sooner.
TTFN
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