Tonight, Sio is going to her first con, Archon over in Illinois. I kinda wish I could be there, to keep an eye on her, to help her enjoy it, and to share the experience.

When I was much younger, I always said I’d raise kids in fandom. It was a big ol’ extended family, and I liked that, and wanted my kids to have the same experiences. I couldn’t imagine ever being away from it.

Now, it’s been well over ten years since I’ve done anything remotely fannish. In fact, the last con I was at was just after Sio was born — Minicon at Easter of 1994. Sio was just a couple of months old, and we flew to Minneapolis from Chattanooga. That was, I think, the last fannish thing I’d done.

I remember my first con — Chattacon 2 in 1977 (maybe? Might’ve been ’78…). Mom and Dad dropped Kevio and I at the Admiral Benbow in East Ridge… where we attended along with not quite 100 other folks. The thing I remember most was the huckster room, which is where I spent the biggest part of my time. Little did I know that that event would shape a great deal of my life for most of the next fifteen years or so.

Between then and 1994, cons came and went — Chattacon, Minicon, Libertycon, KublaKhan and others — feuds came and went, and folks came and went. I published, I worked on concoms, I found friends, I made enemies. I learned a lot. It was a fun time, and a time when I lived just a little too hard, but enjoyed life immensely.

Beck’s offered to go to a con with me, but, somehow, I just don’t believe it would work. First off, I don’t know that she’d enjoy being around that kind of crowd — too tightly wound, too far outside her realm of experience. For me, it’d be too much like trying to re-capture the past, I think, and I just don’t need to be looking backwards.