The Invisible Geek

Do you remember the last time you played catch with your dad?

My Field of Dreams moment came when I was 14 or 15. He would have been 42 or so. My high school baseball coach didn’t care for having a nerd on his team so I wasn’t getting much playing time. Still, I wanted to pitch, so asked my Dad if he’d catch me in the back yard. “Oh, not today. I am tired from work.” “My back is sore, maybe this weekend” and so on for two or three weeks.

Eventually he didn’t have any reason to deny a legitimate request and we went out to the back yard. He marched off sixty feet from a pile of dirt and we started in on it. A little warmup at first and then he got down into a catcher’s stance without any pads or a proper mitt and caught some JV pitching.

I didn’t throw particularly hard, but my pitches had a lot of movement. About a few dozen in, I threw a big looping curveball. The sort that starts at the batter’s head and dives into the strike zone. And he whiffed on it. Caught halfway between catching it forehand and catching it backhand, he did neither. The pitch missed his glove entirely and caught him square in the groin.

I went over to see how he was doing while doing my best not to laugh. He collected himself and the ball and we went inside with the wordless understanding that catch for the day was over.

Rumor has it that he had friends in college. Volleyball and other sports, pinochle and similar card games, tabletop wargames. I’d hear stories about how he’d keep them playing into the night until he won. They’d devour Star Trek and Tolkien and Asimov. He had changed majors to Computer Science from Landscape Architecture (the family business) after his freshman year. The man was a geek before the modern use of the term existed.

By the time I knew him, he was the epitome of the stoic geek. Quiet. Introverted. Unerringly rational. A touch cynical. In those forty years, I’m not sure if he had a single friend. He socialized (minimally) with the other parents at sports and band events, but they were more of associates. He bowled in leagues with Mom the whole time and played a little softball (that I barely remember), but the competition came first, not the people. He was occasionally bemused by the world around him, but mostly disappointed that people were quite so stupid. You could tell the difference because the corner of his lips would raise two millimeters under his moustache when amused by something.

Even after I learned that such behavior was not the norm for adult males in America, I couldn’t really blame him. He had lived a tough life. An only child to his own dour, stoic father — a remarried immigrant widower who lost his first wife to mental illness, and had fled Germany before World War Two. Dad had already lost a kidney (soccer injury) and an eye (glaucoma) by the time I could walk.

The lack of depth perception made his volunteer catching even more noble.

What does the life of a man with no friends look like? Extra-ordinary. Unbelievable to some of you. Idyllic to others.

He was the sort of person who did things well, or not at all. For Christmas 1986, Santa got The Bard’s Tale (for the kids). Dad was the geek who got out some graph paper to map the dungeons. Of course we had physical graph paper already in the house. Who doesn’t? When he spent hours crafting (award winning) model ships, he’d be the sort with an X-Acto knife slicing tiny strips of balsa wood into individual deck planks.

That carried over to his work as well. The man had one job for his entire working life. Not just the same job, but effectively the same role. For forty years (with two exceptions), he worked on the same codebase. Even as the department was bought and sold and bought again, he was there. Hell, it probably was on the same mainframe for all that time too. The only breaks were in 1999 to fix Y2K bugs in the dusty corners of a 200 year old company, and near the end of his career when the company had him teaching COBOL to Indians because it was more cost effective than modernizing the code.

I can’t remember a single day of overtime or a single weekend ever spent at the office. Home at 5 like clockwork. Never exhausted from the day. Ever dependable. Then it’d be off to soccer or baseball or band with the kids, or bowling for himself. Maybe just movies or a ballgame on television. The occasional errand. Minimal stress. Never drama.

When I was around 11, I told my Dad I didn’t want to go to Sunday School anymore. He said “okay” and that was that. My parents sent my brother and I there because it was something we should know about, even if they weren’t religious at all. (Or maybe they just wanted a morning of peace). What did he believe then? Doing the right thing. Being honest. Doing what you say you’re going to do. Freedom. Autonomy.

That’s why it was my choice if I wanted to go to Sunday School or not. It’s also why he was disappointed by people so often. They could do anything they want to and they did that? They make all of these commitments that they can’t fulfill. So rarely can they take care of themselves, let alone their loved ones. That sort of aloof libertarianism that Conservatives have preyed upon for decades, and is too often used as an excuse to perpetuate inequity. Thankfully compulsion to “do the right thing” and an above average dose of German cynicism kept him from the worst of it.

It’s why he avoided obligation. It’s why he made sure to fulfill them. It’s why he didn’t object too much when I wanted to move to Silicon Valley from South Jersey and it’s also why he spent five days helping me drive all of my worldly possessions (a computer and a backpack full of Magic cards) to make sure my job offer wasn’t a scam and I had a place to sleep.

Though it’s also why we’ve barely spoken once a year since.

Not out of malice or neglect, but because it wasn’t necessary. I didn’t need help. He didn’t need to check in on me. He had done his job. He had fulfilled his obligation. My self-sufficiency was the reward.

Well… part of the reward. He still had to get my brother to that point (succeeded). And he had to get himself and my mother enough to retire in peace.

Which is why it was crushing when a lifetime of staring at CRTs and fighting glaucoma cost him his vision entirely, just a year away from retirement. He had done everything right to provide and save for his family, but would never enjoy it himself. Instead of retiring in peace, he became that which he despised most: someone who couldn’t take care of themselves. A burden.

He met this great tragedy as he did with everything, stoically. You’d see it sometimes. A snap of impatience. Jokes that were a little darker than usual. A touch of shame when he had to ask for help to the bathroom. But the majority of the time was the same mask of stoic pride. Mom tried to help as best she could. Movies with good audio description. Not complaining too much about how much she hated driving. More audiobooks, fewer paperbacks. Pairing up to play through Baldur’s Gate.

It was not enough of course. It could never be. Video games disappeared. Model ships were impossible. Even bowling became a passive activity, a mere spectre of better times.

Which is why it was less of a tragedy when he simply never woke after surgery to address complications from that old soccer injury.

There was no funeral. Not much point, everyone agreed. Outside of a half a dozen people, he might as well have been invisible.

I remember though. Not the ever-present stoic façade. I remember the one time he raised his voice in anger at Mr. Creaney when I didn’t get to play in a soccer game. I remember the hint of concern on his brows when I was worried on my (first) wedding day. I remember the glint of pride in his eye when he drove me to my first date. And I remember that random spring weekend when we last played catch.

Most of all, I remember him always being there.

Thanks Dad. You did a great job.