Jared and the Pits of Zaren

Last year, Jack created a character named Jarod for a story he started writing for fun over the summer called The Halfling. That story was never finished, but when an assignment came up for sixth grade Language Arts last semester, he changed the spelling of the name and took the character in a completely different direction. The assignment included the story being illustrated with photographs created by the student, so the kiddo used his love of Legos and pieces parts from various sets to stage six scenes from the new story he was telling.

Clearly influenced by the fantasy and medieval books – including Tolkien and all things dragon-related – he devours at ridiculous clip, here is the paper he presented for the class. He got an A.

Jared and the Pits of Zaren

Some see me as black-haired, gold-eyed, white-skinned, sword-wielding me, but others see me as a warrior and general. Who am I? I am Jared Diamondback, and this is one of my adventures.

The day was normal at first, but little did I know that was about to change. That day, I got up as normal and went to the training grounds within the castle’s walls.

 If you haven’t guessed, I am a knight and archer in King Lewis II’s army. I am also known as “Hawk.” At the training grounds, I overheard some other knights and a few archers speaking about a dragon called Zaren.

The first voice I heard I recognized as Mark, a strong, low-voiced knight.

“I hear he is 100 feet tall!” said Mark.

“Aye, I hear he has claws sharper than Gregor the blacksmith’s swords,” said one with a higher-pitched voice.

“Oh, yeah, I hear his scales are blacker than the nightshade mix of iron and steel, and his fire hotter than Hell!” said another.

That’s where I come in. “What in blazes are you talking about?” I said with a touch of suspicion.

“Well, if it isn’t Hawk,” said Mark, not at all surprised to see me.

I saw my friend Deric among them.

“Zaren is a myth,” I said. “If he was real, he would have raided the kingdom by now, don’t you think?” I asked.

“Maybe, but he is resourceful, after all. He is the King’s brother’s dragon,” said Mark.

The King’s brother has been dead for years, but now his dragon resurfaces? I wondered to myself.

“I thought Zaren in his rage upon the one who killed his master was overwhelmed in sheer number and was slain by his master’s killer!” I said with a touch of curiosity.

“Whatever, let’s go guys,” said Mark, and all but Deric left.

“Hey, Jared, do you believe them?” Deric, who has blond hair, blue eyes, a higher pitched voice than Mark or me, and is of average height, asked.

“No,” I said with a sneer. “What do they know? Some people are so stupid, and Mark is one of them!” I said, but I didn’t know how wrong I was!

The next three days went on as normal, seeing no sign of Mark or his gang until Friday, when the King wanted to see me. I admit it was a little nerve-wracking to be summoned by the King and his wizard Gorgavitch (but I didn’t let Mark, who was lurking in the shadows, see). Gorgavitch is an old wizard, portly, kind, grey-haired, nicely goateed, your standard castle wizard. The king is a very charitable man, who gives money and food to the poor. He also is a brave warrior and only gives quests to the best, of which I am one.

“Ahh, Jared, there you are!” exclaimed the King. “I have need of your services and talents for a quest to reclaim my enchanted chest plate,” said the King.

“I would be honored!” I said proudly. “When do I depart, my liege?” I asked with a cock of my head.

“You leave in two days’ time,” said the King. “You had best start packing your things. You have a long journey ahead.”

The next few days were filled with packing, and people wishing me good luck and saying farewell to me. Deric, who asked to come, was granted permission to join me on my journey and quest by the King.

One week later, we came upon the Desert of Endless Flame, so named because of the scorching fire and sunlight strewn about the desert. It was there we faced our first obstacle when we stumbled into a goblin camp. The one in charge was a fat, pampered, grotesque, and vile beast that we saw only from the back. At first, they were fighting over something very large and very fat. It turned out to be a boar.

“It’s ours! We’re the ones who slayed it,” said one group.

“No, it’s ours! Give it to us or we’ll slay the lot of you and take it for our own!” hollered another group.

They appear to be two separate groups. Hmmm…, I thought as they started to fight each other. After an hour or two, I snapped. I jumped headlong into the fray. The little goblins saw us first. They stopped fighting amongst their kin and turned all attention to us. One shot an arrow, and then all heck broke loose.

Deric and I slipped away unseen into the night as they slayed each other while we captured their leader to be our guide. The next three weeks were spent getting out of the desert. Then came the forest.

The dark, wet, old forest of Mirkwood is where we met the elves. The elves have long been at war with the goblins and orc.

Because of the goblin blood all over our bodies and the goblin leader with us, the elves mistook us for goblins. The elves started an ambush, which caught us off guard. First, they bombed us with arrows and, to make matters worse, the trees seemed to come alive and thrash at us. The elven warriors never stopped their barrage of arrows, even when we tried to negotiate that we were men, not goblins. The goblin leader was shot in the eye and died soon thereafter.

The world won’t miss him, I thought to myself.

Deric looked utterly terrified.

“Let’s try this one more time!” I yelled to Deric over the sound of arrows screaming through the air and elven warriors yelling to each other in elvish. As I yelled, I noticed the new types of arrows being fired.

“Explosives!” I yelled to Deric who was cowering in a cave nearby.

“What?” he yelled over the explosions.

“Explosives!” I yelled again. “This is going to be a long day,” I muttered. “Let’s try to reason with them,” I said.

In the middle of the battle, Deric tried to find a stream to clean off the grime of desert and the goblins.

“Jared,” I heard Deric call, “I think I found our stream!”

“Great,” I yelled back, “let’s clean off this filth and blood.”

We cleansed ourselves, and the elves realized we were humans and not goblin or any other wretched beast. To convey that they were sorry, they sent with us a companion named MapleWorth. They said he was their best warrior and archer.

“Welcome to our questing party!” I said.

“Yes, welcome,” added Deric.

“Let’s get going,” I said, suddenly serious.

“Why now?” asked MapleWorth.

“Because I’m sure the King is getting impatient, and we musn’t tarry any longer.”

“Ok, let’s get going then,” said MapleWorth.

After a week or two of traveling (it’s hard to keep track of time whilst questing), we ended up in the Pits of Zaren. I was curious as to how MapleWorth knew his way around so well. To my surprise, when I asked him about it he said, “My kin and I used to live in these lands until Zaren came one day, long, long ago and stole our land and burned our shops and houses. He is what changed our lives forever. He drove us out of our own lands.”

That was when we came upon Zaren, and I saw him for the first time in the flesh. He looked just as I had heard the knights and archers describe him so many months ago. He was truly a fearsome beast, and he still had the tattered remains of the King’s brother’s armor on his back.

“Who dares enter my realm?” the dragon asked, more perplexed than angry. “Hmmmm, an elf,” he said as he caught our scent, “and two men. One of your number is terrified out of his wits,” the dragon said, a little amused.

“I am Jared, this is Deric, and that is MapleWorth,” I yelled to the great beast of the pits.

“Well, Jared,” the dragon sneered, “if you think you can slay me, it will take more than a mere sword and bow.”

“I know that, for this is no mere blade. This is one of the Lost Blades of the Dragon Wars in which you supposedly died,” I grinned at Zaren. “This blade will be your demise, you foul, wretched beast. I will send you back to the black pits from whence you came!” I screamed at the beast. And I promptly cut off three of his big fat toes as MapleWorth and Deric notched their arrows and prepared to fire.

Zaren shot a bolt of flame and smoke into the air, and then it began.

“MapleWorth, focus your fire on his chest and face. Deric, you focus your flaming arrows at his feet,” I said in a grim but commanding voice.

“What about you?” they asked in unison.

“I will slay him myself, if you guys can keep him occupied,” I yelled back.

In the end, I slayed Zaren, but Deric got slashed up pretty badly. MapleWorth was surprisingly unscathed.

“Jared,” Deric mumbled from his hospital bed, safely back in the King’s realm.

“Yes, I’m here, my friend.” I said reassuringly.

“I… I can feel myself fading. I… think this is the end,” he mumbled.

“N…” I was cut off by the sound of the old heavy oak doors being pushed open. The King and MapleWorth walked in.

“It is not the end!” cried MapleWorth, as he tended to Deric’s wounds. “I can heal him.”

“Thank you for returning my chest plate. I shall make you a noble, and you will be welcome at the castle any time,” the King exclaimed with delight.

And that concludes this quest. Farewell, good reader, farewell.

Youthful Resolve

The kiddo brought this home earlier this week for Tracy and me to sign. Thought it was a pretty awesome resolution, explaining both the problem and the consequences of not changing the behavior.

Plus, the drawing of the student crying because he’s getting bad grades is just priceless!

(click to enlarge)

Revelations

Capping off what might have been the kiddo’s best weekend ever, we finally let him watch Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. We have held off on this because it’s PG-13 and can be intense in spots.

Although he doesn’t know it yet, he’s going to Star Wars Celebration V in a few weeks, and Tracy and I thought it was only right that he see all the movies in the franchise before we go. So while Tracy and I were making dinner Sunday night, and we off-handedly asked him if he wanted to watch Episode III, he flipped! I don’t think anything could have made him happier. (But he was also thrilled to learn we were having tilapia, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and a salad for dinner. All on his “favorites” list.)

Tracy and I are not fans of the prequel trilogy. We also understand that it was not created for us. It was made for the kiddo and his generation, so we let them have it. Tracy and I obviously sat through Episode III with him Sunday night, and although we’d seen it at least once before (maybe twice), something was different about this viewing. Sure, it was very cool to watch our son experience a Star Wars movie he has waited years to see, but from our point of view, we were surprised just how powerful the death of Kit Fisto and the execution of Order 66 are when you’ve watched two seasons of the Clone Wars television show.

Over the course of the last two years, we have watched all of the Clone Wars episodes as a family. We look forward to it every week when new episodes are being churned out and have watched the season one DVD set a couple of times through. Because of the series, we have grown to care about the prequel universe characters. And, for the first time in a long time, the characters of the Star Wars universe on the big screen meant something to us.

I should have seen it coming, though, because the first time Hayden Christensen appeared on screen in Episode III during this viewing I was actually taken aback! I knew I was watching the live action movie, but was fully expecting the Clone Wars animated version of Anakin Skywalker anyway. And I think that’s a testament to how well done the series is – I have maintained for a couple of years now that it took the Clone Wars animated movie and subsequent television series to get me to actually care about Anakin.

How to Spend an Early Summer Evening

We went out to dinner with friends to our favorite local watering hole the other night, the Winking Lizard. We got home around 8:30, and after the kiddo walked the dog, he and I went out back and threw the football around until it was almost too dark to see. As we were walking around the side of the house to head in, we were distracted by the lightening bugs just starting to make their presence known.

My gut told me to herd the child inside and get him into his ready-for-bed routine and settled in with a book. But something stopped me. I guess it was the sense of wonder I could see gleaming in his eyes even in the dusk. I watched him chase a firefly across the backyard. Then he told me over his shoulder that he has never caught fireflies before. With that, it was over. There was no other option except to toss the football aside and head back into the yard to catch fireflies with him.

As it got darker and darker, it became increasingly harder to find them when they weren’t lit up, but we caught quite a few over the next half-hour or so across our and our neighbor’s yards. The lightening bugs would land on us and crawl all over our hands and arms, lighting up now and again to make our skin glow.

After a while, we invited Tracy out to join us. The three of us wandering around out there must have looked pretty odd to anyone who passed by, but it was one of the best evenings ever. Soon it was too dark to catch the fireflies at all, so I collected the football and the three of us headed inside. And while the kiddo curled up with a book in bed, Tracy and I were left to remember a little bit of what it was like to be eight years old on your summer break, if only for a night.

The Karate Kid 2.0

Had a fun “guys” day with the kiddo Saturday. After a week of business travel away, it was great to have some one-on-one time together. He caught up on his Summer Bridge workbook pages while I mowed the lawn, then we headed over to the Metroparks for a three-mile walk. Afterwards, we came home and he helped me clean the interior of my car, then it was time for showers, lunch, and The Karate Kid.

The kiddo has been so excited about this movie for a good month now! I have a fond place in my ’80s heart for the original film, so there was no way I wasn’t going to indulge him in seeing this remake. I debated watching the original movie with him (it’s available on Netflix instant streaming) in the weeks before we saw the new film, but I decided to take a page out of my buddy John’s book and his Star Wars wisdom to recognize that “every generation has a legend.” And John’s absolutely right. Who was I to burst my son’s bubble of excitement over this retelling of the underdog tale? Did he need to know this was a remake of a movie that I probably think a little too highly of because of my own nostalgia and the fact I saw it through a young teenager’s eyes? No.

And where the protagonist of the original film is of driving age, the main character of the remake is 12 – a far closer and relatable age for my kiddo. So he went into the theater armed only with what he knew from the trailers and with zero knowledge of the original’s existence. And we both had a great time! The movie clocked in at two hours and 20 minutes, but hit all the right notes and never felt drawn out or padded. For those of us who remember the Reagan Era, there were nods to the original that were reverential without ever feeling like they were ripping anything off.

The arcs for both Jaden Smith’s Dre Parker and Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han were affecting and resonant. Smith carried the movie like a pro, indicative of his pedigree. Chan was beautifully understated, surprising me by plumbing some emotional depths I didn’t know he could pull off.

One thing I really admired about the movie is that, despite taking place in China, it never dumbed down the language barrier. Instead of going the route of something like The Hunt for Red October (a movie I love) where suddenly the foreign language is abandoned for English with the corresponding accent, the characters who spoke Chinese did just that with subtitles throughout the entire film. A bold choice for a movie aimed at adolescents.

I thoroughly enjoyed this remake of The Karate Kid. I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those movies that leaves an impression on my kiddo and this generation like the original did on me and mine. And that’s a good thing, because there’s always room for well-told underdog stories to inspire us.

Hoop Dreams

The kiddo isn’t a great athlete, but he’s not horrible either. He has a zest for life and an enthusiasm to everything he throws himself into. Currently, he’s playing in the school’s youth basketball league. There are five third grade teams. They practice on Tuesday nights and play two games Saturday mornings through all of November and most of December. Games are played at the two middle school gymnasiums – they play half court games, but the full width of the court.

Each team in the league (third grade through sixth) is given the opportunity to scrimmage on the high school gym floor during halftime of a varsity boys basketball game. The kiddo’s team’s turn was Friday night.

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve been traveling a lot for work the last couple of months, but I’ve made it home every weekend for the kiddo’s games. I was in Pittsburgh again this past week, and I knew I needed to get home in time for his big moment on the court.

Because nothing goes as planned, I had actually padded my calendar to accommodate my leaving Pittsburgh late, and I’m glad I did. I ended up leaving an hour-and-a-half later than originally planned, and got stuck in rush hour traffic downtown. But I caught a break when I called Tracy from the road and realized the varsity game was starting at 7:30 instead of 7:00.

I ended up walking into the high school gym with two minutes left in the first half! Prefect timing. And the first person I saw was the kiddo, who was lined up with his team, waiting for their big moment. After I got a giant I-missed-you-all-week hug, I found my way over to Tracy and the other youth parents we’re friends with who were all sitting together.

Halftime wasn’t very long, but sandwiched between the dance squad’s routine at the beginning of it and the varsity teams warming back up at the end, the kiddo and his mates had their five or so minutes in the sun! Playing full court ball, running hard end-to-end, hustling, and trying their best.

Before their scrimmage started, I told Tracy, “You watch, he won’t touch the ball once tonight, but will still have the greatest time ever.” And I was right. He didn’t get his hands on the ball, but he had fun. He hustled on defense, ran the length of the court hard, and was clearly having a blast out there with his friends. I was so proud of him.

Leaving the school later, there were a couple of high school girls at the entrance. They saw the kiddo – still in his basketball jersey, shorts, and sports goggles – and told him he did a nice job. The kiddo said “Thank you” in that awkward eight-year-old-getting-a-compliment-from-a-high-school-girl kind of way, and I know he was proud of himself, too.

Home

We said good-bye to Vinnie today. His last “Vinnie Here” column ran in the bulletin today. Before Mass started, we sat down in the pew and read the final conversation that Father and Vinnie had to share with us. And the kiddo saw Father up near the alter preparing for Mass, and he went up there by himself and told Father he was sorry Vinnie died and that he liked Vinnie and that Vinnie was a good dog. Then the kiddo came back to us, sat down, took a pencil out of the pew and drew a little halo and wings on the picture of Vinnie that has accompanied all the inspirational columns in the bulletin week after week and year after year now.

In his homily today, Father talked about how hard it is to deal with loss, and how amazing it is the way four-legged friends become family and so important to us. After both Father and much of the congregation composed ourselves, he also told us the story of how the internet is a funny thing... how it can get you into trouble. Like it did for Father on Friday. He read the story in the Akron Beacon Journal about shipping dogs from the overcrowded Summit County shelter off to a Buffalo shelter. He then got on the internet and looked through the dogs available in Akron, but none of them connected with him. But from that site there was a link to a Labrador rescue site in Dayton, and the very last dog on the list was The One. Looking a lot like Vinnie, this female dog made her way into Father’s heart.

Father told us how he kept enlarging and then minimizing her picture, over and over. Then he picked up the phone, figuring that no one would be around on the day before the holiday. But someone did pick up, and Father chatted with them about the dog. Then Father told them he didn’t really know when he could make it down to Dayton... and the person on the other end said, “But I’m headed to Pennsylvania on Sunday afternoon and have to go right through Akron. I could bring her if you’d like!” And that’s how we came to have a new church dog. Not one better or worse than Vinnie, not a replacement, but simply a new member of the family.

This week we’ll be headed out to PetSmart to pick up a gift card and the kiddo will be making a welcome home card, because we want to make sure Minnie knows, just like Vinnie, that she is loved and she is home.

Vinnie's Gone

We had a lot going on last weekend… we had a wedding to attend Saturday and then Sunday I had a table at the Akron-Canton Comic Con selling copies of Deus ex Comica alongside my friend and editor John, who was selling copies of his book (also expertly edited!), Collect All 21. So we didn't make it to Mass Sunday morning.

If you've read my book, you know the kiddo spends one week every summer at my parents' house in the same tradition that my sister and I spent a week at our dad's parents' house when we were kids. That week this year for the kiddo is this week.

So Thursday morning, the kiddo sees the story about Vinnie, our parish dog, passing away in the Akron Beacon Journal. He calls us from my parents' house crying, horribly upset over Vinnie dying. Just a heartbreaking moment as a parent. One of our two dogs had back surgery about five years ago, is getting old, moving slow, and growing blind. My wife and I have commented a lot over the last few months about how much of a downhill slide the dog seems to be on. Nothing bad enough to have to make the tough decision yet, but we know it is looming in front of us, so maybe it’s a good thing the kiddo’s going through these emotions now with Vinnie.

For a few years now, Father has been writing his pastor’s message in the weekly bulletin as a conversation between him and Vinnie. Sometimes I think the kiddo’s favorite part of Mass each week is reading the Vinnie story. Many were collected in book form a year or so ago, which I have really enjoyed revisiting. We celebrated the kiddo’s first communion this May, and he decided to spend part of his gift money on his own copy of Vinnie Here. So as he was crying into the phone, asking us to give extra hugs to our dogs from him while he's away at grandma and grandpa's and telling me he was going to be so sad because there wouldn’t be any more “Vinnie stories,” I reminded him that he had Vinnie’s book and he can read and reread all those stories as much as he wants.

A couple weeks ago, Vinnie was roaming church before nine o’clock Mass. The kiddo’s face lit up as Vinnie sided up to and poked his head into our pew. And there were lots of pets and wags and smiles. I’m glad we got to see Vinnie that morning. Those personal greetings always meant so much, and that recent one makes his passing seem a little easier for all of us to take now.