While I was growing up, I had a hell of a lot of fun. My very early years were spent going to the local sports complex with my dad and my little brother, playing backyard baseball/soccer/tag with a gaggle of kids from the neighborhood, having fashion shows with gear from my massive dress-up box for my mom. Then, as I got older, my friends and I started throwing boy-girl parties involving air hockey tournaments and games of spin the bottle, and would have sleepovers where we dyed our hair and cleaned the house on Saturday afternoons so my mom would give us movie money.

In my early teen years I’d hang out at the skatepark and take trips out of town with as many people as we could pack in a van to watch bands play; later, at the end of my high school career, weeknights were spent driving around, listening to jams and making pointless stops at WalMart, and weekends were spent partaking in outlandish late-night drinking shenanigans accompanied by board games.

Then I went to college. And while some of my best friends did attend the same school as me, and while I did meet a handful of fantastic new people, for the most part, I was pretty miserable. I went from a small town where I had known everyone for 5+ years to a giant school filled with rich kids from suburbia who wouldn’t know real fun if it kicked them in the teeth. Read More »