Weirdo (part 1)

Ever since I was a kid, I knew that I was different. Sure, everybody says that, and to some extent it's true, but in this case I knew that I wasn't just the "run-of-the-mill unique"-- I was downright strange.

For one thing, I was obsessive about things. I would dive into something, and it would consume my life. After my parents split up when I was four, my dad moved to Richfield, right across Cedar Avenue from the Met Center, home of the Minnesota North Stars. In the winter, it seems like we went to a hockey game almost every weekend. Even at that young age, I became an uber-fan. I memorized the entire starting line-up, including their stats. Had there been sports talk radio back then, I could have had my own show and held my own with the Pat Reusses and Sid Hartmans of the world, even though I was only in first grade.

A couple years later, after my dad moved away to Arizona, the first Star Wars movie came out. I became the biggest Star Wars fanatic you ever saw. I memorized the movie, I bought the toys, the comics, the paperbacks, and I even tried my hand at what would become known as fan fiction a couple decades later. All I talked about day and night was Star Wars.

A couple years later, it was model rocketry. Then Dungeons and Dragons. Every hobby I had I threw myself into it completely, obsessively, to the exclusion of almost everything else, including friends and family. Eventually, as I neared puberty, it became music, and the guitar.

(to be continued...)