How It All Began... Part III

Here we are at the third and final of our blogs on how it all began. I’m your friendly neighborhood JB and I will be giving you my firsthand account of what sparked my geeky bug. This isn’t just one story however; this is really the trifecta of geek. To accurately give you a rundown of how it began for me, we have to cover my introduction to action figures, movies, and comic books.

I was born in 1982. It was a good year for toys. It was also the year that the movie, The Toy, was released, but Master Bates aside; it was a great year for action

figures. It was the year that introduced kids to He-Man and the modern incarnation of the GI Joes. Some of my first memories of being a kid were very action figure centric. I remember being in the basement of my childhood home playing with Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain play sets with my brother. I also remember that the kids down the block from us had the USS Flagg and I was insanely jealous. For those of you who do not know or remember, the Flagg was by far the biggest and best action figure play set that ever existed. Talking about it now seems like it was a figment of my over-active childhood imagination. It was released in 1984, had a retail price of $109.99, and was just shy of 7.5 feet long! It was the unicorn of playthings and needless to say, we tried to hang out with the kids from 5 houses down at every opportunity. Without a doubt, this laid the foundation of my love for miniature plastic worlds and the miniature plastic people who inhabited them.

If I had to pick a favorite movie of all time, I would be petrified. There are so many movies that are amazing, but only have an impact the first time you watch them. Need examples? Ok. The Usual Suspects, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, and Citizen Kane are all perfect examples of movies that, while amazing, are only truly moving the first time you see them. To have a favorite movie, it would have to be one that you can watch dozens of times and not lose interest. That movie for me is Ghostbusters. I remember seeing it when I was four. It was terrifying and engrossing at the same time. I wanted to hide my eyes when the librarian turned into a ghoul, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen. I wanted to be Peter Venkman and put on a jumpsuit and live in a firehouse in the greatest city in the world. My world was changed forever. Fast forward a couple of years and The Real Ghostbusters became my favorite Saturday morning cartoon. The characters looked a little different, but their personalities were the same and most importantly they had new adventures to go on and new ghosts to bust. I was hooked, and remain hooked to this day.

Growing up I think always knew who Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man was. They were icons in media and were most nerd’s ambassadors to the world of superheroes. I distinctly remember my first run-in with the X-Men, though. I was very young and someone had a set of X-Men stickers. A dozen colorful images on a sheet and at the top it said X-Men. There was a guy with a visor, another guy with knives coming out of his hands, a blue monkey, someone who looked like he was made out of glass, and a couple of women in weird outfits. I was struck by my confusion because for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out which one of them was X-Man! Sometime later, I was given a box of comics to read. It was once again these X-Men guys. I quickly learned that “X-Men” was the name of the team and that there was nobody on the team named X-Man (yet). I also learned that mutants are feared and hated by a world that just didn’t understand them. The summer before 1st Grade, I was placed in the gifted program at school. The program was designed for talented students however it always felt like there was a stigma attached to the kids that were in it. We would attend class in another room once a week and learn different things that the other kids didn’t. We were taught how to make electrical pathways, and learned about the process of conducting a mock trial before a judge (the teacher). One day a week, we were excused from normal classwork and we got a chance to learn things that were incredible. The school that the X-Men had as their home base was called Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters and they learned how to use their special gifts there as well. I felt like the book was written for me. I was called a nerd and that was okay. I learned early on to embrace it and it has made me into a person that makes podcasts with my best friends and lives a very full and happy life.

-JB

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