The answer to all of the above, of course, is yes. Especially that last one.
In actual fact, I was born August 7th, 1975 (feel free to send me presents! Even on days other than that!) in St. Paul, Minnesota, at 11:56 AM, the third of three children (the other two being my sister Liz, age 34, and Tessa, age 31.) I've been a Minnesota native all my life, save for an unremembered trip to California at age 1, a vaguely remembered trip to Boston at age 3, several yearly trips to the home of my grandparents in Oklahoma, a few yearly visits to GenCon in Wisconsin, and one very memorable trip to Cincinatti to attend a friend's wedding. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
My father is also a Minnesota native, and recently retired from a life-long career in teaching junior high. My mother met him while he was in grad school down in Oklahoma, and moved to the land of ice and snow when they married. They both taught me a number of lessons, the most important one (to my mind) being that you should never compromise your dreams. My dad taught junior high because it was what he wanted to do, and he never regretted it. My mother stayed at home with myself and my sisters, but she never let herself grow idle, or feel trapped--she became involved in the community, and I consider her to be a model for any woman who doubts that housewives can have lives.
But enough precahing about them--let's get back to my life, and to the most important development that happened to it, which hit in 1979. My parents purchased the resort that my dad had been making fishing trips to his entire life, and for my entire childhood, teenage-hood, and up until I graduated from high school, summers were spent at North Star Resort, on Lake Kabetogama, in Voyageur's National Park. This, as you can imagine, had something of a dampening effect on my social life...for other kids, summer meant that they could do more stuff with their friends. For me, summer meant that I moved three hundred miles away from mine.
On the other hand, there were compensations. I was allowed to run around barefoot with no curfew, I got muddy, I learned how to swim, I caught turtles and snakes and salamanders and frogs and toads, I've seen otters, minks, beavers, foxes, deer, bears (in a few cases, a bit too closely), and other animals that a lot of people don't get to see outside of zoos...in short, I'd say it was a fair trade. I learned how to fish, technically, but I've never enjoyed it, and I don't do it anymore. My problem is the payoff--after you spend hours and hours in this boat, doing absolutely nothing, if you do it exactly right...you get a big slimy icky thing that you have to cut up and eat. I'll stick with pizza, thanks.
Socially, I didn't really start living until high school, where I auditioned for theatre on the advice of my eldest sister. I appeared in four plays ("The Rivals", "Arsenic And Old Lace", "Incident at San Bajo", and "Androcles and the Lion"), and for the first time, I met people who were interested in the same sorts of things I was. I also was privy to the world's most embarrassing moment in the history of the stage--in the final scene of "The Rivals," everyone was on-stage. We all watched as one character prepared to deliver the monologue, "Ah, Julia...how can I sue for what I so little deserve? I dare not perservere...yet hope is the child of penitence." (It says a lot that nine years later, I can still remember that line.) The actor walked up, and said, "Ah, Julia...........shit." Then stood there for a full thirty seconds, groping for his line. While the rest of us watched, paralyzed by embarassment.
I didn't do any theatre in college--I decided that while I enjoyed acting, and while I was competent, I wasn't really good enough to take it to the next level without a serious commitment, which was something I wasn't really willing to make. I was already getting more interested in writing by this point, and had submitted several rejected comic ideas to the then-fledgling, but soon-to-be-industry-destroying Image Comics. I continued writing throughout college--in fact, the previous incarnation of this website existed on my college account--and at the same time, I started working for people other than my parents. It was at one of my many jobs that I met my best friends--Starbase Omega, a place and a time of my life that still seems tinted with a bit more magic than I'd expect.
Starbase was a laser tag arena--you got a gun, and a target pack, and you went around shooting people. Right there, you can understand that we are not talking about the kind of job that encourages future MBA's. No, Starbase encouraged theatre drop-outs, sci-fi fans, and an assortment of the truly weird that I've never seen matched in any other job. There was Jeff, who managed to procure a second name-tag and convinced a whole crop of new employees that he had a twin brother named Adam who also worked there. There was Paul, who took a pinwheel from the gift shop, pranced over to the manager (who was with a customer at the time), tapped him on the shoulder, said, "You're a real boy now, Pinocchio!" in a falsetto voice, and pranced back. There was Dennis and his wombat impersonation, Joe Mashuga quitting by stapling his work uniform to the bulletin board, squirt gun fights, Glump-Ball...it was the most gloriously deranged period of my life, and looking back on it still brings a smile to my face. Some people say that high school is the best part of your life, but for me, it was those early years of college, and a job where I could shoot people every day and get away with it.
Alright, nostalgia over--I'm out of college now, I'm working harder than ever on my writing, and I'm currently at a job that pays me some actual money. The future is ahead of me, and in the words of Warren Ellis, "The future is an inherently good thing."