Parents look forward to the wonderful, magical day when their child chooses a career. Endless opportunities are narrowed down to one lifelong field, where their child can go out and make his or her mark. Mine has decided to become a megalomaniac.
While my 12-year-old son James has always had leanings in that direction, the concept of supervillainy as a potential vocation didn’t arise until he started playing “Evil Genius,” the game where players strive to construct the perfect island lair, defeat pesky secret agents, and take over the world.
“Dad! I just stole the Eiffel Tower!” he said last weekend while I was faithfully performing my traditional fatherly duty of not doing a large chore. In this case, it was moving a bookshelf in his room so we could paint behind it, a task that would require the stacking of books, the cleaning of shelves, and the actual physical sweaty moving part. When he spoke up I was sitting on his bed, drinking my Coke and attempting to move the bookshelf with my mind.
When I expressed disbelief — the Eiffel Tower is, by all reports, even tougher to move than a bookshelf — he cackled and showed me his monument-shrinking ray gun. He then spent some time showing me around his evil headquarters. There were death traps, an army of minions, more bite-size national monuments, lots of bubbling chemicals, and stacks of Weapons of Seriously Mass Destruction.
James really did have a flair for this. And I realized that encouragement of a child’s natural aptitudes is important, even if they do tend towards death rays.
After all, he’d need to apply himself more in school if he didn’t want to end up as an evil fry cook. He almost balked at that, but visions of staggering wealth and power helped keep him motivated.
“Will I still need math? Can’t I torture someone to do it for me, or build an 80-foot killer robot with a calculator in it? That shoots plasma beams?”
“Oh, no, you have to have a good grounding in math to calculate trajectories and to make sure your countdown timer is going the right way. Mad scientists need math, son. It’s what separates them from mad sociologists.”
Politics. Chemistry. Nuclear physics. Care and feeding of henchmen. Advanced electronics. How to exchange your enemy’s brain with that of a gorilla. Mad scientists have to be versed in all these fields of expertise, although I admitted I wasn’t sure which colleges offered the best evil genius curriculum. Are mad doctors with community college degrees looked down upon? Is that why they keep trying to blow up continents?
Fortunately I’m not worried about any actual world domineering occurring because he’d never create his own doomsday weapon if he thought he could get his mother to do it for him the night before his worldwide ultimatum was due. “Mom,” he’ll say. “Since you’re up, could you take over the world for me? You’re closer.” Besides, judging from countless Christmases, even if he got the world he’d get bored with it in three days and lose it in his room somewhere.
In the meantime he’s watching James Bond and Austin Powers movies, “Pinky and the Brain,” and “The Apprentice,” and taking notes on each evil wannabe’s fatal mistakes. He can’t perfect his sinister laugh until after his voice changes, but just yesterday he convinced the UPS guy to turn against his masters and serve only James. And he’s working harder on his math.
I don’t know where this will take him. I don’t know if he’ll suddenly pop up on CNN one day, laughing maniacally, in front of a map of Europe with big circles on it and the words “emergency evacuation” on the crawl, or if I’ll lose contact after an unexplained mushroom cloud appears over the Kurile Islands. All I know is that as his loving parent I want James to be the best he can be and to go wherever his skills take him, even if it’s a secret moonbase.
But if he does manage to conquer the world, he can send around a few minions to move this bookshelf for me.