damn, i wish i'd met her at peace time

Last Saturday after work I decided to stop by the video store to pick up a movie. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, nothing worth watching is out right now and anything that is probably sucks, I'm looking at you Transformers. I started with the new releases, but again found nothing, until this came in to view. Something about this cover told me I had to rent it. It looked like just another Japanese sci-fi action flick from the back, and I didn't really feel like thinking so I picked it up and brought it to the counter. Both of the helpful dorks at the counter told me that I'm "going to love it." and that they have been waiting "for over two months, for this to get here." Like I said, they were dorks. After I exchanged a few awkward high-fives with those dudes, I headed home, took Assy-face (Voltron's dog) out to pee, lit a few candles and fired up the Daewoo DVD player.

Holy shit.

5 minutes into it I realized what had drawn me to this movie. It was a live action re-make of an Anime OVA that I haven't seen in close to 15 years. Suddenly, I was that pimply face tween dork all over again, transported back to one of the most strange times in my life. A time between my oblivious carefree childhood, my adolescence and drawn out puberty. It was a time where I wanted to continue to be a boy, but forces beyond my control were driving me to become the man-boy I am today. I'd like to ask you to jump into my little time machine internet, as I whisk you away to the age of my own tragic innocence.

Imagine a boy, five feet tall (maybe), and 80 lbs soaking wet (definitely). He is probably the goofiest bipedal thing you can think of. Wildly curly hair, and eyebrows to big for his face. His teeth are crooked, and they will eventually take 3 years to correct. Clothing is not much of concern to him because he probably wears the same pair of jeans and the same shirt everyday, until his mother tears it from his body, and he must figure something else out. His chief concerns at the moment are cartoons, comics, video games, and Marvel cards. School, music, women, he cares for these not. He has a large group of friends but only a few of them share his true interests. This boy is me, age 12.

Like I said; Cashhern is actually a remake of an anime movie known here in the west as Casshan: Robot Hunter, and when I was 12 this was one of the first memorable experiences I had with anime. It's cannon is so ingrained in my memory that I still quote it from time to time. Cashhern was middling at best, and painfully overdone at worst. But that's not the point of this post, the point of this post is to show you a long dead version of myself, but a version who most inspired who and what I am today, and the person who I am closer to now than any of my other iterations.

It must have been the summer between 5th grade and middle school. It was a great summer indeed as I recall. There was the community pool in the day time, the BMX track, and the empty campus of the university that we ruled over for 3 months a year. Then, at night, there were the sleepovers. This is when the majority of the dorkery went on. We would play videogames into the early hours of the morning. "Magic: The Gathering" was slowly becoming the next D&D of my generation and we were on top of that as well, and of course there was the Sci-fi channel, which would show anime movies late at night. Casshan was just one amongst many.

This is still one of the happiest times of my life, and I look back on it fondly because of how innocent and foolish I was. "Cool" was just a word that you used to describe things that had meaning to you. However, when the summer ended and 6th grade began, "cool" took on a whole different meaning. Cool became something to be sought after, and being into videogames and other dork stuff, was so "un-cool" that you were made to be an outcast if you liked those things. Those things being anything that the cool kids didn't like. So, being the desperate loser that I was, I abandoned the things I truly loved, and started liking the things that everyone who was cool liked. This meant ridding myself of all the friends that were into the same shit as I was in to, something I regret everyday. In other words, I sold out. I still secretly loved all that geeky stuff but for years, I never admitted it openly to anyone, which tore me apart. Until we got the internet, and I found a lot of people just like myself, while playing text based games, but that is for another time.

Years later I would be vindicated. Somehow, during my time in high school, it became cool to be into video games, and this became a common bond amongst many people within my clique. Not only within my clique but also all over the U.S. It seemed as though almost overnight that people decided that it was OK to be into dorky stuff. The shitty thing is that I spent almost 5 years hiding my true self from people/friends who accept me now for what I am: An introverted, ego maniacal, dork face, who talks to the internet.

I miss how happy I was then, but at the same time, if I hadn't been put through the social ringer that I was put through, I probably wouldn't have grown in to the person I am now. Would I do it all over again, armed with the 25 years of knowledge I have now? Absolutely, but would it really make a difference? My 12 year old self and my 25 year old self are exactly the same. We are both comfortable with who we are and we aren't going to hold shit back. Though if I could give some advice to my 12 year old self now I would say:

"Listen here bro, you are going to be harrier than anything you can even imagine. Dad? That dude doesn't have shit on you, talk to Mom today, I'm sure there are some treatments ready for kids your age."