Kickoff

Well, this marks my fourth blog. But while the other three were all tied to specific games, this one is reserved for my reflections on geek life. I am a forty-one year old teacher in a prep school in the Philadelphia suburbs. As a matter of fact, it is the same school I used to attend, so I have that whole "Welcome Back, Kotter" thing going.

I was a geek then, and I am a geek now. Several years ago, some students asked me to teach them how to play D+D. One thing led to another, and I am not the faculty adviser for not one but two gaming clubs (one for RPGs, one for wargames). One of those early students decided to give me a nickname "The Mad Doctor." Since that time, I began my second life as "Mad Doctor Mark" online.

I made my initial entry into geekdom in 1979, when I picked up a copy of The Lord of the Rings. I have read that book at least a dozen times since then. Tolkien led to D+D, which led to wargaming, which led to a medieval studies major in college and a Ph.D soon after. It has taken 30 years, but I am finally over the social anxieties which led me to keep my gaming life a secret for so long.