I recognize that I am taking on some serious flavor from Rune Soup at the moment, but I don't think I can be accused of having taken on a guru. But if it starts to seem that way, please be sure to let me know to find my own rabbit hole, quick.

 

That being said: yes, I was a weird kid.

One of my earliest memories involves waking up, face down on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my brother,  on one of the first nights that my family spent in our new house. Its the only memory I have of my brother and I sleeping in that room. We moved down the hall some time shortly after. The common assumption was that I had rolled out of the top bunk. Since this is an early memory, I don't recall having rolled out of bed before. But...  I don't remember it ever happening again either. Ever.

Some time later, in the bedroom down the hall, my brother and I saw... something. I have only the vaguest recollection of this experience, but I remember we were both terrified. I seem to recall us ending up together in the bottom bunk, clutching each other in fear. That was not a common occurrence by any stretch of the imagination. Details are hazy. But there was an orb, or something vaguley head shaped, shifting in color, though I have a strong sense recollection of blues and greens. And it floated, for some time, it would seem, across the room from our beds. I think it remained until our fright roused the parental units and they came charging in and bringing the light with them.

There's more, of course, but those are two memories that stick with me and probably represent the only truly odd occurences from my childhood. There is another early memory, one that involves a church and that surely influenced me... though I'm not quite sure how that forged the connections that it did for a child of three or four.

The rest of my story there is probably all too familliar: some-what ostracised for being "odd", a little too smart, a little too precocious, a living a little too much in my head and in books.

Something I've just realized, however, is the common thread that goes back to my earliest memories and that is telling stories. I may not have been writing them down, and its still taken me far too long to truly hone the craft, but I have been telling stories since I was four or five. I was doing Star Trek the Original Series fan fiction at that young age, interactively, with my brother, every night when the lights went out. It progressed from there, and my brother and I lost are penchant for shared play at some point. But I continued to tell stories to an audience of one for the rest of my life.

So, yeah, I was a weird kid. How about you?

 

Inimicus Dei Constituitur