Sometimes I just like to roll into the bathroom for a little break and flip through the pages of Dragon Magazine.
Now that I am closing in on 45 years of age and I just spent the morning helping one of my two five year olds deal with puking out one end and going potty out the other...poor sick kid (just the flu), I kind of like to continue this tradition.
I am always a little sad that I have to be satisfied with the mere hundred or so copies of Dragon magazine I have on my book shelf. I'd pay good money for this beloved rag if it ever went into print again. Anyone reading this probably already knows that the magazine has been out of print for several years now.
Anyway. I flip open the random edition I've picked up to check the inside date. This is a new habit. I can never remember when these things fell in the timeline of my life any more and I can of like to recall when it was I picked that particular issue up.
This particular issue (not the one shown here) was printed in 1996. There I sit and I say to myself. Wow. 1996. This is a fairly recent edition and then I have to stop myself. 1996. Dude. That was FOURTEEN freakin years ago. Not three or five or even ten. Fourteen!
I sigh and realize that I am not just getting to be a little older. I am getting -old-. Let's face it. You can kind of fake yourself into thinking you are still climbing up the very last upswing of the middle age curve as you arrive at 45. Once you hit 45 though you are clearly...clearly past the middle of middle age and heading on the downhill towards old.
Oh well. At least my chosen beloved hobby was written by those good old souls that came before me. Most of the vanguard of the hobby is pretty up there in years. Lately it seems they have been dropping like flies.
For me, my gaming experience began as a sort of happy accident. I was just entering Junior High School so I was just a kid but I managed to discover the game around 1977 - just a few short years after Dungeons and Dragons hit the shelves in the first place. Add to this the availability of the Junior College just a mile up the street from home. My friend and I could ride our bikes up there and watch the college guys run their games. Which was really cool. They had miniatures...lots of dice...all kinds of cool maps and the best worlds and games. Most of them had been running D&D for a few years which made them experts to us.
A few of the nicer DM's even let us sit in and play the henchmen from time to time as long as we acted cool (didn't freak out over a bad dice roll or whine).
By 1979 I was able to find a local D&D group run by a high school guy named Phil who turned out to be an awesome DM.
I sometimes wonder if the stars had not been lined up just right...if I'd never stumbled into the college gaming club or into Phil and Andy's game whether my deep love for the hobby would have gained roots.
Enough for now. I have to work a little today but I plan to get my ass back home as soon as possible so I can work on terrain, paint a couple of miniatures and work on the next episode of my own home RPG game.
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