I wrote, for work — I won’t link it here because separation of church and state, and I don’t want them to check referral traffic, not that anyone does that anymore — about the kid going to PAX West this year and having what could, honestly, be described as something close to a religious experience. What I didn’t write about for work was the reaction of those I was working with to his experience.
The short version of what you need to know about his visit: it was his second convention ever, and his first video game convention. That last part’s very important, because he’s a gamer and it’s something that I worry sets him aside from a lot of people in his day-to-day life. Sure, there are people he can game with online (and he does), but I don’t get the feeling that many of his peers are into the same things he is in the same way he is, and I think sometimes it can be a little lonely for him that not everyone gets (or cares about) his favorite games, references, whatever. Within minutes of being at PAX and walking out onto the expo floor — with its massive booths promoting specific games, or tech, or merch, all of which he’s familiar with ot at least understands the architecture of — he turned to me and said, entirely seriously, “I have found my people.”
The rest of his visit just reinforced that: all the vendors he spoke to got what he was about and talked to him as an equal (ignoring me in the process, wonderfully). He got to wander around and try new tech and, in the strangest way, find new parts of his gamer identity and therefore who he is, and it just felt like this really intense, wonderful experience for him.
By the time he left (asking if he could do it again next year, asking if he could do more than one day), I was pretty emotional; I felt like I’d been able to help him have this amazing experience, and I went back to the show office feeling all kinds of verklempt. A handful of friends who were responsible for organizing the show clearly saw that I was feeling stuff, and asked what had happened and how the kid’s visit was, and I relayed a longer version of what I just wrote, feeling the sting of maybe I’m about to cry during the whole thing. I just felt full of feeling.
Cut to the next day, and one of the friends in the show office pulled me aside to say that she’d shared how much my kid loved the show to co-workers at dinner the night before, and they’d started crying. “This is actually why we do the show,” she said, “so that people can feel like he did.” Another told me, without any sarcasm, that even if I wasn’t working the show next year, they’d make sure the kid got passes to the entire thing.
I think part of what made me feel so emotional about the whole thing was realizing that the kid was having an experience like I had when I got to my first comic show — the excitement of these people get it and also feeling less isolated for liking shit that no-one around me seemed to be able to more than tolerate on my behalf. But, honestly, part of it also became how genuinely touched the people behind the scenes were that a stranger had been so thrilled and excited and fulfilled by something they’d been partially responsible for. I really like PAX West; it feels like such a kind and welcoming space, even to me as a non-gamer. After this year and all of this, that feeling only got so much bigger.