The week had three big events in it for him: the Avalanche game on Friday night, the party on Saturday, and the Clone Hero championship at the party. All three mattered the same.

The Avalanche were coming off two losses, and they were playing the Lightning, the team they beat for the Cup in 2022. He covered his door with Avalanche logos and “Colorado Avalanche” signs until the printer ran out of toner. He wore Avs gear every day that week: sweats, socks, a t-shirt, a sweater, the jersey.

We trash talked all week. We bet on the game. If the Avs lost, he’d have to clean my car. “My car is going to be so clean,” I told him. He’d bring up 2022.

He wanted his friends over on Saturday to play Clone Hero, which is a lot like Guitar Hero, played on the computer with a plastic guitar. Mostly video games in the basement, which is exactly what a seventeen-year-old wants. I wanted it to feel like a birthday, too.

So I turned it into a concert. Neurodefender is his streaming name, so the party became the Neurodefender World Tour 2026. I had a poster printed. The basement door got a “Stage Door: Authorized Personnel Only” sign. The snacks went under a green room sign. Every kid got a custom backstage pass, and I had one made for myself.

Earlier that week, he’d asked what the winner of the competition would get.

“A trophy, of course,” I said.

I found a local trophy shop. They were so new that their online ordering system never saw my request. I called on Friday to check in, and they still didn’t see it, so they told me to email. They had the parts in stock and could put it together and engrave it that day.

It was a little over a foot tall, with an electric guitar insert, engraved “Neurodefender World Tour 2026 Champion.” When it was ready, the shop said it looked really cool. They were right. He came with me to pick it up, and I think that’s when the competition became real for him. He carried it to the car, and then into the house. I joked about where I’d put it when I won it.

His face lit up. The kid is a sucker for a trophy.

After that, the pressure started building. He talked about practicing. He talked about strategy. He was really thinking about it. The Avalanche game on one side, the trophy on the other.

We watched the game together in the living room that night. Pizza night. The Avs got off to a strong start, and I knew I was in trouble.

The Avs won. I’ll be cleaning my own car.

Saturday morning I cleaned the house and the basement. When he woke up, we moved his PC down. As I slid it out from under his decks and lifted it, the dongle for the guitar, which was in the front, bent against the floor. I felt it right away.

He hadn’t seen the poster yet. When we carried the PC downstairs, he looked up at it. “This looks so cool,” he said.

We hooked the PC up to the big TV to test it. The dongle was broken. The guitar wouldn’t connect.

I could see his heart break a little. I panicked. Everything was set for a Clone Hero party except the guitar, and the party was in two hours.

Amazon wasn’t an option, because it wouldn’t arrive in time. Best Buy’s replacement for his exact model wouldn’t be available until Wednesday, but they had a different version in stock that I hoped would work with his PC. When I told him the store had one, he was still worried, but he wasn’t panicked.

Two stores near us showed it in stock. I picked the closer one. The only one they had was an open-box return. I asked if they had an unopened one. They said yes, and then it turned out the return had been logged wrong. We opened the box to check the parts. It hadn’t been cleared by Geek Squad, so even buying it took hoops. If it didn’t work, there wasn’t time to try the other store.

I was gone a little over an hour. He took his shower and got dressed. I texted him on my way home, in case the kids showed up before I did and he needed to let them in. I texted their parents, too, to tell them what was going on. I didn’t pass any of the worry on to him.

I got home at 11:58. The guests were coming at 12.

We went down to the basement and opened the box. He was so focused. We plugged things in. It didn’t work.

Then we realized the guitar needed to be charged. The lights came on. It synced. He played a song, and I watched him relax, like a big weight had come off him. The doorbell rang upstairs.

He wanted to be the one to hand each kid their pass. Then he led them downstairs.

His friends didn’t have much experience with the game, so we did a few warm-up rounds while we ate snacks. Then the competition started. We’d made an app to keep score and pick random songs. Everyone played three songs, picked their own difficulty, and got a random song from his library. Your score was your accuracy times a bonus for the level you chose, so you could play it safe on Easy or swing for Expert. I’d been worried about that all week. He could go Expert, miss too many notes, and not even make the finals.

Round one was random. For round two, whoever was in last went first and the leader went last, so everyone got a stretch of feeling like they were on top. He walked around singing every song while the rest of us played. When it was his turn, he was locked in. Straight face.

After three rounds, he was in first place. I was in second, barely ahead of third. He’d done amazing all the way through.

So it was another chance for him to beat his old man. That was my name on the scoreboard, too.

We played rock-paper-scissors to see who picked the difficulty. He won, and he picked Expert. Then the random song picker landed on “Could Have Been Me” by The Struts.

It couldn’t have been me. This was his to win.

I went first. I thought I did pretty well. Then he stood in front of the screen, locked in, and near the end he put his hands up, missing notes, a grin on his face. It was like watching someone about to cross the finish line who knows they’re going to win. I got nervous. It would have been awful if he’d done that and lost, one of those gold medal moments that turns silver.

It didn’t turn. He was right. 83 percent to my 78.

Everyone clapped. His friends were happy for him, and they leaned into the beating-his-dad part, too. He was the center of the universe. We gave him the trophy he’d been eyeing all week. He held it, then lifted it.

“Nice work, pal,” I said.

I took a picture of him in front of the Neurodefender World Tour 2026 poster.

I was just so happy. He’d been building this up all week, and I’d been worried he would be disappointed if he didn’t win. Mostly it was relief. I’m glad it was close. I really did my best.

Afterward, we talked about how it was closer than I’d thought it would be. He’s always kind and gracious about it. He said I did pretty good, too. But he was happy he beat me.

He beat his dad, on his birthday, in front of his friends, fair and square.

I’ll take that loss every time.