Owlbear

I intended to write this post in September, recalling the autumn of 1983, 40 years earlier. Here I am, late November, which, 40 years earlier, was the end of the fall that was so memorable. But perhaps reflecting after Thanksgiving instead of after Labor Day provides a different persepctive.

Fall 1983 was all about Dungeons and Dragons, video games, and music videos. I started eighth grade and would turn 13 on Nov. 6. The weather all fall was gorgeous, including a few wonderful Saturday morning when my sisters and I ran with the fledgling St. Eugene's cross country team (we would run laps around the church to practice). 

Music that fall was amazing. "Friday Night Videos" presented music videos and opened more music beyond the Top 40 I was hearing on WLS and B96. Some of my favorites that autumn included "In a Big Country" by Big Country, "Modern Love" by David Bowie, and "Living on the Edge" by Jim Capaldi.

That summer, I finally moved into my upstairs room after six years of being in the small downstairs bedroom. The new room included an actual closet and room for a desk. My parents' old hutch became a better place for my clothes rather than the old dresser I had jammed everything in. My grandfather had given me this old, old TV that had barely worked, but I still could get Channel 9 on it. But I old enough that fall to not have a bedtime, so I could watch TV downstairs late on Friday and Saturday nights.

I also played so much Dungeons and Dragons in fall 1983. Besides the games with my neighbors, I started dungeon mastering a group with a few school friends who had never played D&D before. We played our first session in an activity room at the Oriole Park field house, and it couldn't have gone better. Maybe it was because I was hanging out with newer friends, but I lost my neutral attitude and was cheering along when the group defeated the owlbear in the module I was running them through. It might the thing I remember most from a memorable fall. 

I wrote about the summer of 1983 recently, which also hit its 40-year anniversary, and commented how it seems strangely recent. Reflecting on this time of my life, I think this was the transition. Everything before feels long ago, everything since feels much less distant. Perhaps it was the adolescence, nearly a teenager, everything taking on added importance. Perhaps everything came with more understanding, more contemplation -- and that made it all become more serious, more fraught with clarity and confusion. 

That November felt like every other Chicago November -- bleak, cloudy, colder, darker. "The Day After" premiered that month, and though I didn't dare watch it, the lead-up to it freaked me out enough to sour my outlook for months. Winter 1983-84 wasn't terrible, but it was anxious and seemed to last forever. The sun and warmth that disappeared in November wouldn't come back until April and made the first months of my teenager-hood a festival of pessimism. 

But the fall was still great. There have been plenty of other memorable autumns, some that were better than 1983, some that stand out for what they meant and where I was and where Lori and the boys were. However, none have the owlbear, which can be seen as the combination of challenge and potential and fun. Sure, there are other metaphorical owlbears, but nothing will ever replicate the first.