Raising your long sword high above your head, you deliver one final staggering blow to the Orc Warrior, causing it to howl out in agony as it drops to the ground in defeat…

Oops, sorry about that – you know how it is when you find yourself lost in a world of pure imagination and all, roaming the foothills to cleanse the land of evil, rescuing random damsels and princesses along the way with the ring of a blade or the flash of a wand. Well, then again, maybe you don’t know, as this is a realm that’s not exactly often frequented by commoners such as yourselves. For the world of fabricated fantasy and adventure is a special one, often forged early in one’s life before other such obstacles like sports and social lives are able to take hold and distract our young heroes from the real jewels to be found deep within their own imaginations! Sure, this may all sound like dorky gibberish to you now, but of course, all of that can change with the roll of a 20-sided die…

So for those of you completely and utterly bewildered trying to figure out what in the world I’m rambling on about at this point, I recently started playing Dungeons & Dragons again – something that I haven’t done since I was maybe fourteen years old. I can fondly remember many a Saturday night spent hanging out in one of my friends’ basements, eating Cheetos and putting away Mountain Dew like there was no tomorrow while we battled against dragons and trolls and all sorts of other stereotypical medieval bad guys in a feeble attempt to live vicariously through these mighty heroes who lived in our imaginations. Simpler times, those definitely were…

Or at least sometimes they were simpler, anyways! It’s kind of funny to look back at it now, but Dungeons & Dragons was a game that got sort of a bad rap when I was growing up – not from my own family, mind you, who always seemed more than eager to help me buy more books and graph paper and different size dice than would ever be found in your average Monopoly set, but most certainly from a lot of other folks that I knew and even some of my other friends’ parents. We always heard concerned gossip of being anti-social and unathletic by spending our weekend nights safe within the confines of our parents’ basements instead of out chugging beers in a field somewhere until 3am. Of course, I think my “favorite” accusation of them all was how playing Dungeons & Dragons could somehow lead to Satanism, as if studying a particular book over and over again, taking to heart every word without question could ever lead to any sort of fanatical behavior that might have a less than pleasant to the masses-kind of impact on society.

…oh, wait…

But of course, coincidentally I ended up engaging in this great creative adventure for a number of years with my friends and none of us actually ended up worshipping Satan or Stan or anyone of the sort really, at least as far as I can tell. I mean, seriously – I was a kid who got nightmares after some of the “scarier” scenes from Ghostbusters 2, so it sort of goes without saying that demons and evil spirits and other monsters from the 7^th level of hell were a bit out of the question for a fourteen year-old me! Besides, it wasn’t really until I started listening to that infernal rock and roll music in high school that I began to dabble in the dark arts, which was well after I had traded in my polyhedral dice for an electric guitar, so if there was anyone to blame, I’d have thought that the likes of Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica would’ve ranked higher on the list than a 22^nd level ancient red dragon that was guarding a king’s ransom in gold and jewels in terms of who to blame.

Fortunately, though, I guess that’s one of the things that some fifteen years later I don’t really have to worry about anymore because by now most folks have pretty much settled on the idea that I’m a bit demented just based on the sense of humor alone – no need for any religious influence here, be it demonic or otherwise! Of course, I also don’t have to be all that concerned about being called a dork these days anymore, either … albeit not so much because I’ve risen above that to become the cool guy from my former geeky self, but more so because I honestly just don’t really care what anyone else’s opinion on that particular matter is anymore! And granted, while I do actually still get called a dork on a fairly regular basis, by now it’s pretty much just my wife doing the taunting at this point and frankly, that’s something I think my fourteen year old self would actually be pretty impressed with if it were suggested to him back in those days that one day he’d know a girl who actually wanted to talk to him on a regular basis in any sense of the general concept!

Oh, if I could go back in time, there are so many things that I could tell my younger self about the future – why he shouldn’t be so self-conscious about indulging in something that he genuinely enjoys, how that cute girl in math class that he kinda likes would end up getting knocked up and having twins before they graduated high school, why he needs to start saving his pennies now so that he’ll be able to invest early on in a little up-and-coming Internet company called Google in about a decade’s time! And of course, most importantly of all – why he shouldn’t put off for a full ten years returning to this realm of fantasy and wonder simply because life gets in the way, as it tends to more and more the older we get…

So with that said, if anybody needs me and is brave enough to heed this call to arms themselves, I’m hearing the battle cries of more Orcish Warlords off in the distance and this +3 long sword of mine is hungry for orc blood. Don’t wait up, honey – your dork’s got a kingdom to save!