Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Dawn of Greatness...

Story? You want my story? Okay!

Life was never easy for me; I was born a rich Mormon boy. My Father was of those geek electrical engineers with entreprenurial spirit and my mom was a florence nightingale-esk nurse who loved fine arts and manners. So, as you can see, I started life with every possible disadvantage.

From there, it gets worse. Growing up in the 80's, I was schooled in all the pleasantries of the Reagan era: impeccable music, high fashion, computer science and Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Yes, I learned the valueable life lessons like: donning the silk and satin of a Youth Choir (Second soprano section until age 13, when my voice and life changed immensely), building useful scientific items such as electro-magnetic cannons to destroy those pesky Ruskies, and discovering that no matter what the d20 said, Gerklebobs cannot be killed by dragonslayers*. Oh yes, and most importantly, I learned every possible use and mis-use of a pre-teen boy's favorite element: FIRE.

So were the days of my youth: studious, judicious, and serious. *cough*

My adolescent life began promisingly. My schoolmates and I invented the forerunner of "Warcraft" circa 1982, only to discover the state-of-the-art TI-99's of the day did not have enough memory to store even the icon sprites. We've been considering litigation for years about the rights. We have the code memorized, but it's in the funny noises from loading programs off cassette tapes. Lawyers only cringe when we try to display our evidence by "singing" the audio code then call security to escort us out of the building. (If you are a real geek, you are laughing your head off right now... if not... you missed a truly awesome age of technical wonder).

Girls, unfortunately, had not yet figured out that Geeks were poised to rule the world and the Jocks were destined to be Roid Rage debacles. For reasons I cannot explain, in that era, girls took to the Quarterback much quicker than the acne-encrusted code-monkey. I grew up before everyone knew Bill Gates would make Darth Vader look like a South American dictator.

Their naivete about the Future of Earth put somewhat of a damper on my social life -- well that and the 1972 Mercury Montego I drove... aptly named City Assault Vehicle or CAV. CAV was a typical creation of the 70's... 1/4 inch all american steel lined the hull powered an engine so big you could see the gas gauge dropping while idling at a stoplight. The upside was I could haul 13 people all with personal space left over. The downside is my date, when I was lucky enough to have one, could sit in Nevada while I drove up I-15 in Salt Lake City.

As everyone in knows, the cure for a Young Man in my situation is to ship him off to a backward foreign country to eat bad food, ride a bike in a suit, and teach peasants churchy-stuff for two years. This process, obviously, turns geeky guys into burning-hot stud muffins.... at least it does in Utah. But I promise, Utah is NOT a wierd place.

This process worked so well for me a girl that should be well out of my league decided to hitch her wagon to my One Way Ticket to Paradise (or nearest convenient parallel dimension).

And there, begins the tale detailed in this compendium of pixels.

A Missive By the Hand of:
Darren Hintze

*Variables preclude a fixed number.

5 comments:

Stephanie F. said...

You forgot to mention that you taught your siblings so well that they still don't know better than to call you "Great".

Betty Grace said...

fuuny Darren. Glad to have you on board the blogging world. I'll add your link to my site.

Heidi P said...

"Dawn of Greatness"!? I can't stop laughing! You really are great! : )

Darren Hintze said...

Glad you all found it.... now as soon as I can figure out how to post photos and links I'll have something worthwhile up here

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