Dear Everybody:

I turned 20 the other day.

Twenty. Two Zero. Two Decades old.

Seriously. How did I get this old?! People talk about things from '99 and I think to myself every time, "Oh that was what one-two years ago?" before I remind myself, "No it was 11 years ago, it's 2010. Oh yeah, and we still don't have flying cars yet."

Sometimes it really seems like it was only a few years ago when I'd get up bright and early Saturday mornings, sometimes too early, and watching cartoons on TV, sometimes causing my Dad to come out and tell me to turn it down, as it wasn't even 6:30 yet. Then later after everybody was up, and my cartoons started, my Mom'd bring me a glass of Apple juice and a Strawberry Nutri-Grain bar, and threw a blanket on me while I nibbled away, captive to my rigorous schedule of hopping from Fox Kids to watch Digimon, back to WB Kids to watch Pokemon or Yu-gi-oh before returning to Fox Kids to watch some other shows I've now forgotten.

Other times it seems like it could've been a year ago when I was hiding out in my basement, playing away at Donkey Kong 64 on my N64 or Final Fantasy IX on my PSOne, on this crappy TV where you had to turn a knob to get to the plethora of channels such as "3, 4, and 7," but trying to get as much time in, while being as quiet as I could, so maybe Mom and Dad would forget I was down there and wouldn't tell me to go to bed. Even when they knew I wouldn't be able to sleep, and would just sneak out and watch whatever Dad was watching on TV from behind the fireplace where he couldn't see me.

I remember the long hours spent at the huge honking monitor of my ancient desktop computer in the Computer Room in the wee hours after my Mom had gone to sleep, playing some fan-translated Game Boy Advance rom or looking up some strategy on how to complete this epically hard side quest in Kingdom Hearts, like it was only a couple months ago.

I've spent a lot of my life in front of one screen or another. Most of the time with my Mom telling me to turn a light on so I don't go blind, still don't wear glasses by the way, and my Dad probing my thoughts on whether I thought computer programming or video game design, more recently video game reviews, were my future. But nonetheless I wouldn't be me without all those geeky things I've done. So thanks for being enablers Mom and Dad!

Still at other times I feel as though I'm hurtling through life at 88 miles per hour, and I'm going to be out of school and in the real world sooner than I can say "1.21 gigawatts." Pre-school, Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle Schools, High School, and now College. All in no time at all.

Time is a fickle thing. It seems like yesterday I was in PJ's on my couch, and tomorrow I'll be graduating college. But yesterday I was sitting watching the Red Sox game here at UMass, and tomorrow I'll be figuring out the best way for me to waste the 7 hours between my Comm 222 class and my Comm 297S Action Film Screening. Wasting time is something I've gotten pretty good at over the years.

I just googled "time wasted quotes" because in this future-society that we live in that's all I had to put in before one click brought me to the Bertrand Russell quote I wanted. It's no robot butler, but it'll do.

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

I've enjoyed almost every second of wasting my time on video games, novels, comic books, T.V. and movies. Both by myself, and with friends. So here's to everyone who I've ever talked nerdy to, talked geek with, shared single player with, played multi-player with, or completely nerded out with. Whether it was only for a second, or whether we can't remember when we weren't; Thanks. For everything. I mean it.

And I think that there's only one suitable way to end this post so, "Play me off Keyboard Cat!"