"Oh, hey!" I remarked to my daughter as we strolled through the local Barnes & Noble. "The new Traveller!!"
I stopped us in the aisle and reached for the book; she perused the spines of the D&D 4e and White Wolf stuff sitting below. She's not yet 4; she doesn't understand what gaming is, but she does know that it involves dice and books, and she knows that Mommy and Daddy play Castles & Crusades and Traveller.
I thumbed through the book a bit and then put it back. Then, I voiced to her my opinion. (I'm in the habit of occasionally speaking to my daughter as I would to a grown-up, which I believe helps her language skills, but what do I know? I'm just a simple sandwich man.) I said to her, "Well...I dunno. I dunno if I need this new one...I mean, I have all of the Classic Traveller stuff -- on that CD-ROM, you know, ll the GDW stuff...plus a copy of MegaTraveller, and almost all the GURPS Traveller stuff, too. So I dunno if I could really get this one."
"What?" she demanded. She said t flatly -- not as in "what did you say?" but rather as in "Get what?"
"The new edition of Traveller," I repeated. "Since I have so much of the old stuff, I can't justify getting the new one."
I put my hands on my hips and looked down at my cute little blue-eyed child, who looked up at me patient and in a gentle but very matter-of-fact voice said:
"Then why don't you not get it and not worry about it, then?"
...
...it's funny. Until I became a parent, I did not know it was possible to love a human being quite as much as I love my kid. But now, she's constantly doing stuff to remind me that I do.
Reminding me of that, and also the fact that she's smart.
