A wise man once said, "The details of my life are quite inconsequential." Indeed - this statement truly applies in my case. So why would you care about a bunch of inconsequential details?
	Ay, there's the rub. In fact, you probably don't. hm.
But everything's so darn confusing these days...see, I was hoping that, in writing this, life would make more sense to me. 'Cause it doesn't make much sense right now. Heck - it would all be worth it if I could even figure out where all of those socks go after I put them into the dryer. But I thank you for reading all of this insignificance anyways...well, let's see - where to start? I suppose that being born is a good place to start. That happened in Bolton, CT - about the closest you can get to nowhere in the middle of somewhere. If that makes any sense whatsoever. I'll bet that it does, though - 90% of the folks that I talk to grew up in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but play mini-golf, watch movies, and set random things on fire.
	Let me tell you - I was no exception. I did all of the same mischevous things when I was a kid - burned all of the hair off my legs once. Yup. I did a lot of other things too - an airplane pilot let me into the cockpit the first time I was on a plane because I was saying "wow!" so much, and I got so button-happy that flight was delayed 45 minutes...well. I suppose that I have to give some credit to my parents at this point - they never sold me. "FOR SALE - HYPER KID. $25 or BO"Yeah - they're pretty cool. In a parent sort of way.
Anyways, I did a lot of things as a kid. Not only things that a devil spawn would do - normal things for a little kid. But the activity that occupied the lion's share of my time was, far and away, playing in the dirt. Shortly after I discovered the concept of shovels, my parents decided that the preservation of the yard was important enough to invest some money in a large pile of dirt to be kept in the backyard. And thus it was that the formative years of both my brother and I were spent in the following manner - wake up, eat breakfast, play in the dirt, eat lunch, play in the dirt, eat dinner, go to bed. boy was it great.
	There were so many adventures to be had, running about in the woods, building great fortresses in the trees out of scrap lumber and tree branches to protect from whatever enemy might show up next; planning great tunnels in the earth that would start from our backyard...you've heard the stories. Why, I even remember one time that he and I started to dig a hole to china. Past 3 feet it was near impossible, with all of the roots and rocks that were stuck in the ground...but what were these small impediments in comparison to such great ambitions?
What else was i into as a kid? Well, I had a number of friends - we would always be out playing in the snow, making forts in the woods, trying to figure out the rules for monopoly and then realizing that the current banker had all of the money anyways (how strange!) but there are three things that recurred in the life of the miniature me...
	The first is that I always had a book to read. My parents started throwing books at me when I was very young, so I read a lot. There wasn't much to do besides read and watch tv when it got dark, you understand, and books were so much more interesting than tv. Barney Miller vs. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...it never took me very long to make that choice. I read a lot of fiction as a kid - bet that I read every Roald Dahl book twice by the end of second grade. And that's probably the best explanation for why I am the way I am today...sad, no? But I moved on to sherlock holmes and hard science fiction soon enough - see, Ramona just never did it for me.
The second thing that stands out from when I was a kid was the science in my life. My dad has always worked at building lasers for various applications (well, as long as I've been alive) and there is a high casualty rate for equipment in that area. So he was always bringing home "gadgets" for my brother and i to play with - you know, new weapons to use against our enemies and whatnot. But he always made a point of telling us about what the gadget was being used for at the end of its life. All of this talk about q-switching and cavity-dumping lasers was hard to understand, but the mystery of the whole matter and the enthusiasm of my father made me want to understand it. So it's no surprise that I ended up going into engineering - there was really never much of a doubt.
	My last boomerang activity (those which kept returning) was piano. My mom made me start taking piano lessons when I was in kindergarten or first grade. I suppose that I thought that piano was alright, but all of the stuff that I was learning, the exercises, scales, etc....well, I just hated those. And practicing in general was for the birds. I really just liked sitting down and toodling. But there was to be none of that. So I guess that explains why I stopped playing piano in fifth grade and started trumpet. But by my senior year of high school, trumpet was just scales and repetition again, so I took up guitar. And that's where I am now - really enjoying playing guitar, messing around.
Well, after about fourth grade, life started to get a lot more complicated. There's all of that growing up nonsense, worrying about girls and friends and zits, trying to get into good schools, etc. But those are stories for another time - maybe one day I'll tell some of those. Thanks for your company, though. At least I found one sock. Good night.