Waiting for Wednesday, Volume 3, Issue 37

When I was in my Junior year at college, my laptop's background image was, of course, an image of Batman drawn by Jim Lee. The art featured the Dark Knight, standing in the shadows and looking about as bad as can be.
I mention this because, while in my Junior year, I hadn't read a comic book in at least a decade. I had no idea that the image on my laptop was taken from Jim Lee's epic Hush storyline, or that that particular title was taking comics by storm and helping to usher in a new era in the medium.

I also didn't know that, in just over a year or so, I would embark on a mad hunt of every comics shop in my area to track down a copy of Batman, issue 608, which was the beginning of the Hush arc.

I didn't know any of this stuff, and I honestly didn't care.

But, as I've said many times before on the blog, I've always loved Batman, and I've always wanted to be Batman.

What can I say? Some people have Real Person Aspirations, like becoming a doctor, or a lawyer, or a pumpkin salesman in Michigan. For me--and for as long as I can remember--I've just wanted to be Batman.

You know, but without all the tragedy.

For a whole mess of reasons, Batman has been with me since day one, it seems. Some of my earliest memories (granted, I suffered a couple of concussions in college, so these might not be actual memories) revolve around playing with Batman toys (back when they were, in fact, toys, and not action figures), watching reruns of the Adam West Batman show on TV, and listening to an old record that came with a book about Batman and the Scarecrow.

I have no idea why this came as a record--maybe because it was cheaper than a cassette, or easier to pack with a comic book?--but I remember sitting next to my dad's old record player, listening to that same story, over and over again.

The Scarecrow of that particular story was of the not very scary kind, and the whole thing was very clearly aimed at me and my demographic.

In the end, Batman always foiled the Scarecrow and he did it in exactly the same way, but I still hung on every word. I'm willing to bet that record exists somewhere, in a box under a whole lot of other stuff from many years ago.

A few years later--1989, to be exact--another familiar Batman villain did manage to scare me, and he kept me up at night. When Batman hit theaters in that wonderful, Bat symbol-filled summer, I was right there with my parents and my brother.

Before the movie, we went to an IHOP down the street from the theater (today, the IHOP is still there; the theater is not) and had an early dinner. Then we made our way down the block and to the theater.

I don't think it's possible to explain how excited I was for that film. I was going to see Batman--my hero--up on the big screen, and it was going to be the Greatest Thing Ever.

And, honestly, it absolutely was. The Greatest Thing Ever, I mean.

But Nicholson's portrayal of the Joker scared the crap out of me back then, and I remember coming home and checking behind doors to make sure he wasn't there--waiting for me as he waited for Jack Palance in his office.

Looking back on it now, that's probably one of the main reasons I was always drawn to Batman--the fear. Batman himself was scary (even when he was just Michael Keaton in a muscle suit), but Batman's villains were terrifying.

They still are, actually.

That first Tim Burton Batman movie changed things in terms of comic books and their acceptance in "normal" culture.

I didn't realize it at the time, but comics were becoming mainstream. Batman was everywhere, from drinking cups at McDonald's to magazine covers in supermarkets. The Bat Symbol, especially, became the symbol of that summer and of that year.

Meanwhile, completely unknown to me, comics shops across the country were being flooded with new customers and new, edgier work from creators.

After the first film, I remember being very excited for Batman Returns. I still love the look of that movie, even if it's not the best the Bat has ever been. After that, though, I pretty much abandoned comics and Batman.

Sad to say, but true.

Still, Batman managed to pop up here and there. Like in my Junior year of high school when I was being considered for a fairly prestigious peer group. There was a pretty long process to get selected, and the final part was to sit for an interview with the current year's group.

I honestly can't remember any of the questions except for one: Who would win in a fight, Batman or Superman?

I said, quickly, "Superman. He has powers." Then I paused, and thought about it for a moment. "But Batman has that utility belt, and he's way smarter than Superman...so I don't know, actually."

Ah, the ignorance of youth.

Flash forward now to my Junior year in college, me staring at my laptop and doing everything imaginable to avoid writing that paper on Yeats that's due in a few hours. I find myself searching for a new desktop image--because, clearly, that is more important than starting my paper.

I stumble across the DC Comics website, see the latest interpretation of Batman, and grab the wallpaper you see above.

Flash forward a year from that moment and I'm in a comics shop in Connecticut, rifling through back issue bins labeled "B". My heart races every time I reach the Batman section and get to the higher numbers.

600

601

607

613

Nope. Not this time. Next store.

That goes on for a couple of weeks until I finally find a copy of number 608. It was up on the wall of a now-defunct shop (actually, the shop that replaced that one is also gone), sitting behind the most recent issue of the series.

It was in a bag with a board, and the price was $5.00. That day I bought my first back issue.

A year later I have a pretty impressive collection of back issues. I live for Saturday afternoon back issue bin diving like Scrooge McDuck.

A year later and I have all but abandoned back issues to focus on collected editons and graphic novels.

A year later I catch the original art bug.

A year later, I share a blog with this bearded guy at work and we write about fun, geeky, wonderful things.

Three years later we still have that fun, geeky, wonderful blog.

-- -- -- --

Now, I know I've been getting away from what the typical Waiting for is supposed to be like lately, but that should change starting next week. Why? Well, because the books are getting so darn good, that's why.

DC's New 52 launched last week, and I fell for a good number of them, hard, and I'll be buying almost all of their new titles this week as well.

Of particularly high quality were Action, Swamp Thing, and Animal Man. Even Detective, written by Tony Daniel (known more for his outstanding art then for his writing ability), was quite good.

This week, I'm looking forward to Superboy, Frankenstein, Grifter, and Suicide Squad. But the book I'm most excited about is Batwoman, by JH Williams.

If last week was any indication, you might want to get to your store a little earlier today as many of last week's titles sold out before lunch.

DC took a big, bold step, and so far at least, it's paying off.

When We Were Young

As we're taking this Exfanding trip down (geek) memory lane, I'm realizing something that, while not shocking to me, might surprise a few people here.

You see, I wasn't always a geek. No, really. I swear.

I mean, sure, I collected baseball cards as a kid, and yes, I watched both Batman: The Animated Series and the 1990s X-Men cartoon like it was my job.

And, sure, for as long as I can remember I've only ever wanted to be Batman when I eventually grow up.

But I wasn't always such a big dork--I didn't even buy a monthly comic book until 2003. Actually, I wasn't even a little geeky in middle school or high school, and I certainly wasn't geeky through my first couple years of college.

In high school especially, there were so many other things to occupy my mind that I turned a blind eyes towards lots of really cool stuff. Like Buffy, or Freaks and Geeks. Or the 1990s comics explosion and eventual implosion.

I'm very glad to say, however, that I didn't turn a blind eye towards lots of really cool people.

I was friends with plenty of people who had geeky tendencies and geeky hobbies. I was also friends with lots of people who had never heard of Daredevil or Joss Whedon and who didn't care if Han shot first.

See, I was pretty much the definition of a high school jock--I played football for a couple of years and I was the captain of the baseball team. I was even prom king my Junior year, and I came in second my Senior year.

Which was okay because that year I was named homecoming king. I got to dance with the queen and everything.

Stop laughing. I'm not kidding. It really happened. There are photos. And, somewhere, there are trophies.

But I never really saw myself as a jock, and while classmates who didn't know me well may have pegged me as such, anyone who talked to me for even a little while knew better. I didn't hang out in cliques, mostly because cliques are stupid.

I also didn't eat lunch with a set group of people. In fact, most days I'd eat lunch in the offices of the school newspaper, where I held the position of photo editor.

Yep, even in high school I worked through my lunch hour at a desk.

What I'm trying to say here is, back then I wasn't into a lot of the things that I'm into these days, and that's a shame because I missed out on a whole decade's worth of cool stuff.

And I think that's why I wanted to do this series of posts about our fandoms at different periods in our lives.

I've recently been reading Wil Wheaton's memoirs, and those tales of Saturday afternoons in the basement playing D&D somehow managed to make me feel nostalgic for something I'd never experienced.

This blog does that for me--it makes me nostalgic for things I'd never heard of before Nathaniel wrote about them. Hopefully you get something like that out of Exfanding, too.

-- -- -- --

I'll be back tomorrow with a mixed bag Waiting for Wednesday, wherein I wrap up our "Remember When" posts with a talk about my emergence into geekdom.

I Heart My Nerdy Girl

This blog was founded on the concept of sharing our geekiness with others, and that's something I enjoyed doing long before Exfanding was a gleam in anybody's Web browser. I've roped my parents into playing video games with me, and I've coerced my non-Trekkie friends into watching the Star Trek movies with me, but perhaps my biggest ongoing endeavor has been to lure my fiancée into trying out all the fandoms I like.

We met at college, and I knew her through the video game club, the animé club (which she ruled over with a velvet fist as president), and the all-girls Dungeons & Dragons group I ran, so she had plenty of geek cred before we started dating. There was a lot of overlap in our general interests by the time we got together, but the specifics varied greatly. I felt it was my joy and privilege to bring her up to speed on the nerdy references I made, and to see about exposing her to some fandoms I thought we could appreciate together.

Considering how much college students love their time-wastey Internet videos, it's only natural that Homestar Runner and Weebl and Bob were two of the first fandoms we enjoyed together. Along those same lines, we started to check in on some webcomics together, such as Married to the Sea and Order of the Stick; it's a wonder we ever got anything productive accomplished.

I had previously been catching up on the original Star Trek as well as The Next Generation by going through both series from the very beginning, with my former roommate regularly joining me. When he got busy with other things, I continued watching on my own, and was happy to bring aboard my Trekkie fiancée--I find that most things I watch are better when I can share them with someone. We're now on to Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which is funny because she's the one showing me DS9, as that's the one series I didn't stick around for when it first aired.

Animé has been an interesting process--as is also the case with music, she likes most of the things I do (aside from "Weird Al"; I'm still working on that), but I'm not too keen on many of the things she likes. We can agree on comedy and action-heavy series, but she has a taste for slice-of-life and borderline fantasy shows, which are generally a little slow for me, and many of the shows she's shown me (.hack, Moon Phase) lacked characters I got terribly invested in. We haven't given up, yet; she did expose me to Captain Herlock, and that was fantastic. She's pretty much seen everything I've seen, as I didn't get into animé until college, so she's been the resident animé expert.

She's also the one I have to thank for my love of Firefly, which almost immediately became my second-favorite sci-fi fandom. Any time she's let down by my response to an animé she likes, I remind her that she gave me Firefly, which was cool enough for me to turn right around and show to my parents shortly after watching through it the first time--and I never rewatch anything in such a short span of time unless I can't wait to share it with others.

My gal plays video games, but is often just as content to watch someone else play the ones that weren't as much in line with her skill set. Unsurprisingly, Mega Man was one of the first items on my list. Over the course of the time we've been together, I've shown her the majority of the classic, X, and Zero series. Enough people I knew in college liked Mega Man, but I only had one friend from high school with whom I could really geek out about the series. My gal started making puns about the robot masters and started humming along when I broke out into Spark Man's music, and it was at that point that I knew she was a keeper.

We've also gone through Kirby's Adventure, Castlevania, No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, the Space Quest series, Star Trek: Voyager: Elite Force, Star Wars: Jedi Knight I & II, and Donkey Kong Country 1-3. It's great to have all of these extra references I can make that she'll get ("What would you do without me?" "I'd be a content old man!"), and all of these philosophical discussions about why DKC3 was solid, but lacked so much of the charm of DKC1 (it's because most of the bonus barrels you jump in just teleport you to the bonus round instead of launching you off into space).

I've also gotten her to play through a few games on her own. She joined me on October 1 for my yearly celebration of The End Day by playing through Crystalis, and even though she generally leaves me to play the platformers, she took on the original Metroid. She wanted to have the satisfaction of completing at least one game starring this tough, buff female bounty hunter (before Other M turned Samus Aran into a scared little girl). She's been stuck in Norfair for a few years, which is only a problem because (a) it's very hot in Norfair, and (b) I'm so antsy to show her the rest of one of my all-time favorite video game series. She's promised me she'll finish the game as a Christmas gift to me this year, which is a relief, because now I don't need to make empty threats about not getting married unless she finishes.

I got her hooked on Animal Crossing, and for a time, she kept my long-neglected little town in order by pulling up months' worth of weeds at a time. We of course started playing through the LEGO Movie games together, as well as Tales of Symphonia, and have the likes of Secret of Mana and X-Men Legends on the horizon. She's gone through Dragon Warrior and most of Final Fantasy IV (the GBA remake, though), but she didn't seem to enjoy them as much as I did when I first played them back in my younger years; the former involved too much grinding for XP, and the latter was too angsty and bumped off too many characters unnecessarily for her tastes.

She's tackled Chrono Trigger on her own (and I admit to getting a little twitchy when she started nitpicking about my all-time favorite not-Mega Man game, though she ultimately ended up greatly enjoying it). EarthBound ended up being a hit, but it didn't start out that way for her--despite endless RPGs featuring the same types of fantasy locations, running around modern-day towns and cities was too...normal for her. EarthBound is many things, but normal is never one I ever considered.

I've been a Monkey Island enabler, giving her the first three games to enthusiastically play through on her own, and promising the others once she finished Metroid. I also let her borrow Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II, and I don't think I'm ever going to see them again. We're gradually working our way through Half-Life, but progress has been slow because she's been reluctant to watch--the primitive 3-D graphics aren't sufficiently pretty (not that bloody sci-fi zombies are really pretty, per se), and the experience isn't as engaging when you're not the one who's actually running around with a crowbar in hand and his life on the line.

Showing her Civilization III and Master of Orion II has been a blessing and a curse; we both love the games, and enjoy rallying our armies and building our cities, but even when we're not at war with each other, we're at war with each other if our peaceful expansion starts to get a little competitive. Bonus points are awarded, however, because she went out and bought Civilization IV for herself, and I haven't even played that. It's like she's a bigger fan of one of my fandoms than I am. I'm so proud.

Of course, no excessively long, rambly list would be complete without mentioning Portal 1 & 2, which was just as much a sharing of a favorite fandom as it was an act of community service: the Internet makes more sense when you're familiar with these games. Our current project is Sam & Max: Season One, which was particularly difficult to entice her to watch because those adorably ridiculous Soda Poppers skeeved her out. Persistent nagging seems to be paying off, however, and characters she can relate to better like Sybil Pandemik don't hurt, either.

It's exciting to look back on how many fandoms I've shared with her, and I've barely touched on the ones she's shared with me. While the number of video games I've shown her is grossly disproportionate to anything else, our ratio for exposing one another to songs and music artists has been relatively even. I've gotten her hooked on James Taylor; she's gotten me hooked on Beborn Beton. Our tastes in literature haven't been loosed on one another to any great extent, but I've gotten her to read The Time Traveler's Wife and enough Michael Crichton to shake my credibility as the biggest Crichton fan in this relationship.

College was a wonderful time to be a geek, and I'm exceedingly glad to have found someone with whom I can keep that constant exchange of fandoms going, now that we've traded dorms for apartments and Ramen noodles for...okay, so life's not that different, after all.

[Neko-Chan's note: Hey! My cooking isn't that bad...]

Enjoying the Passage of Time

Music has been a bigger part of my life than I tend to let on here. I grew up listening to the radio with my family; I've performed in several choirs over the years; I've attended a few concerts; I have well over 11,000 songs saved to my computer, and more on CDs that I never bothered to rip. I listen to music in the car, at work, and at home when I write. Music has had a bigger impact on my life than almost anything I've ever discussed here.

Not once in the history of this blog have I written anything about my favorite artist.

I've never met the man, and about all I know about him is that he struggled with drug addictions, that he has a bunch of musical children and relatives, and that he was once married to singer Carly Simon. I know very little else about him, other than that he has been a part of my life ever since I was born.

You might have guessed by now that I'm talking about James Taylor. My parents used to sing me to sleep with his songs when I was a baby, and it's no coincidence that "Sweet Baby James" has always held a special significance for me and for my mother. No matter how my musical tastes have changed over the years, James Taylor has been one of the few artists to remain a constant. I even sound like him when I sing sometimes, or so it sounds to me.

I enjoy JT's songs for the same kinds of reasons I enjoy anyone else's songs, but his music resonates with me in a way no one else's does. There's the connection my mother and I share with his music, not just from her singing me to sleep so long ago, but from singing those same songs together as I got older, with or without JT himself backing us up.

There is a comfort in listening to the music you grew up with, and it's that much more meaningful when it reminds you of the person or people you've shared it with. I've listened to James Taylor with a lot of people, but I have particularly strong memories of sharing his music with my mother, as well as with my fiancée and a few of my friends from middle/high school.

JT's lyrics also deal with issues I can relate to, with the kind of optimistic or reflective twists that keep even the most serious topics from being unbearably heavy. Addiction is one such issue; I've never been a drug addict (I don't even drink coffee!) but I understand what it's like to struggle with being too attached to things. I'm on a lifelong journey to sort out the details of what I believe about life, the universe, and everything; JT's songs explore both the search for belief and the life lessons learned. He's also a clever songwriter with a subtle sense of humor, and I appreciate the fresh perspective he brings to his topics (something I strive to do in my own writing).

I could go on, but I think it's sufficient at this point to say that I am a fan. Not a raving, merchandise-hungry, know-it-all fan, but someone who enjoys the melodies and has a personal investment in his music.

As my high school graduation present, my father got me tickets to see James Taylor live in concert.

The world stopped for a moment.

I wasn't the only one with a ticket, though; there were enough tickets to round up a small group, which ultimately consisted of a few friends from high school. And, of course, we were not leaving for a James Taylor concert without my mother. We were all riding in her van, for one thing. Naw, y'see, even though I was going with a group of friends, at the heart of it, this was a concert for me and Mom. Sharing it with friends just made it better.

Funny things stand out in your memory, and amidst the nervous excitement (I was finding it difficult to completely suppress the fanboy within me), I remember one thing very clearly: McDonald's. We stopped in at McDonald's for a bite to eat, and it was the first time I had seen them offer their McGriddles breakfast sandwiches, with the maple syrup-infused biscuit bun things. I will forever associate McGriddles with going to see James Taylor, which is perhaps why getting breakfast on road trips is more appealing to me nowadays.

Of course, I recall other things very clearly: the outdoor arena's hillside seating with the sea of people on folding chairs and beach towels; the big screens where we watched much of the distant performance; the pure joy of being able to see my favorite musician live in concert, and to share that with my friends and family.

Even though the stage was a fair piece down the hill from where we were sitting, I still had a pretty good view of James Taylor--the man who might never realize how much he's helped to shape my life through his music. It was charming and a little amusing to see this unassuming guy in his 50's, pretty firmly planted in front of the microphone, grooving in place to the music he and his band were playing, performing with every ounce of the skill and personal investment you hear on the recordings. There might not have been laser light shows and guitars smashed on the stage, but there didn't have to be. We were there for the music, and the company, and the little bit of dialogue between songs, and we were not disappointed.

Except when they got to the end of the show and had not played "Sweet Baby James." The one song, of all the songs, to not play.

JT and his band shuffled off. The roar of applause was enough to bring JT back onstage, alone with his guitar, for one last song. If memory serves, he played "Fire and Rain." Classic. Great way to end the show. And had it ended there, I still would have been highly satisfied at a great show. But it didn't end there. We got an honest-to-goodness encore.

An encore that concluded with "Sweet Baby James."

It's hard to describe what a perfect moment in life feels like. Absolutely everything was right with the world, and there was no world beyond my mother and myself on the hillside and the man on the stage below. This last song was an encore especially for us. Moments like that go a long way in sorting out what you believe about life, the universe, and everything.

Now, whenever I have a McGriddle, I have a little flashback. The chance to see my favorite music artist. The amazing performance. The people I got to share it with. That perfect moment in life.

That's one heck of a graduation gift, and I am exceedingly grateful for it.

Wave of the Future

For some collectors, it's a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card. For others, it's the T-206 Honus Wagner. Maybe for you it's the oft-counterfeited but just as classic 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan. Or the infamous Billy Ripken card with the curse word on it.

All rare, valuable, and in the case of that last one, esoteric to say the least.

But you can have all of those, I say, because my tastes run a bit different when it comes to baseball cards and collecting. Or, more appropriately, they ran a bit different when it came to those things.

Let me explain.

Growing up for me was baseball, baseball, and more baseball. Especially by the time I was in middle school, somewhere around 10 or 11 years old, baseball had become my life and my love.

I played it as often as possible--both on organized teams in leagues and out in the backyard with friends--and I watched it on TV devoutly. Back then, you could only really expect to get the local teams, but that was fine with me.

I went with my cousin and my dad and my uncle to Yankees games a couple of times every summer at the Old Stadium. Down the third baseline, about a dozen rows back, a bag of peanuts in my hands, and we were kings.

My love of the game was just entering its prime years. My bedsheets had Yankees pinstripes, and my bedroom walls were adorned with posters and autographs of favorite players from both my dad's generation and my own.

I remember buying plaques at a local mall one hot summer day--one featured a Don Mattingly autograph, the other a Mickey Mantle. The plaques had photos of the players and were made of hand-carved wood and featured a mini bat and a baseball in a case.

To this day I have no idea if the autographs are real, but the elderly man who ran the booth--and made the plaques--in the center of the mall was very nice to me and my mom and we decided to trust him.

But we're getting off topic a bit here. Back to baseball cards, and Mike Piazza.

Despite the fact that Mike Piazza was a star player for another team--he was Rookie of the Year for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1993 and would go on to hit more home runs than any other catcher in history--he was my favorite player not named Don Mattingly.

This was strange for me.

I'd never rooted for a player who didn't wear Yankees pinstripes before, but a power hitting catcher (my position) who beat the odds and made it to the Big Leagues despite being drafted (by his uncle, Tommy Lasorda) as a favor? And he was Italian?

How could I not root for him?

And so Mike Piazza became my second favorite player, behind the one and only Yankees first baseman and captain, Don Mattingly.

By this point, I had plenty of Mattingly collectibles--action figures (remember Starting Lineups??), cards, even the above mentioned autograph. I needed to shift my collecting attention to this Piazza guy.

Before I get into that, though, let's back up just a moment.

Now don't get me wrong. I wouldn't say no if you handed me any of those cards that I mentioned way up above in this post, but my Greatest Collecting Challenge didn't revolve around the most famous, or the most rare, or the most expensive card out there.

For me, it was and, I suppose, it's always been, the 1993 Flair Wave of the Future Mike Piazza.
Sure, it may not have the simple elegance of the Mantle card, or the historic significance of the Wagner or Jordan, but to me, for an entire summer at least, getting my hands on that weirdly designed blue card was all that mattered.

Flair was a relatively new product in the exploding world of baseball cards--the 90s saw the number of companies and series grow exponentially from the previous decade. Baseball cards were big, big business, and card shops (and comics shops) dotted the landscape of most towns in America.

Baseball cards, especially, were just at the beginning of a boom.

"Insert" cards--rare, limited number single cards randomly inserted in packs at sometimes incredibly tough odds (like, say, 1 in every 500 packs)--were the biggest craze, and opening packs of cards was, quite literally, a treasure hunt.

Flair's product was new and shiny, and their regular cards were high-end, glossy, and quite nice to look at. Pack prices were higher than a normal set, such as the baseline Topps set, and collectors really dug the new brand.

The big insert in that set was the Wave of the Future line, featuring young players (mostly rookies) who looked to make an impact in the Big Leagues.

When I found out that Piazza was in the set, I knew I had to have it. And so the chase began. I'd go with my dad to card shop after card shop--and back then, there were four just in my hometown--searching for that Piazza.

There was the easy way to do this, and then there was the hard way.

Most stores back then (and now, actually) opened packs of cards and if they were lucky enough to get something good, they'd sell it for a premium in one of several fancy display cases. If a store owner pulled a Piazza Wave card, that would assuredly be in his or her case.

Of course, that was just not meant to be.

Store after store had Wave cards, but never the Piazza. So before leaving each place, I'd buy a pack (or three) of Flair cards, hoping to pull that beautiful blue card.

I must have bought a hundred packs that summer. I was able to nearly complete the entire regular set, I had amassed an impressive number of inserts, and I swear I had every Wave card except for the Piazza.

I could always tell if the pack had a Wave in it, too.

The unmistakable blue and white poked out of the pack, like a beacon calling me home. When the pack had a Wave, I'd be sure to save it for last and unveil it after I'd rifled through the rest of the pack.

You know, for the drama.

Of course, each of these little displays of wishful thinking ended in disappointment, as I never managed to pull a single Piazza Wave card from a pack.

This went on all summer. Seriously. Four months of this. My poor parents; I'd drag them to card stores and make any excuse in the world to just pass by a shop, pop in, and grab a pack.

My dad got pretty into it, though, I have to say.

On the ride home, he'd always keep an eye on me as I carefully ripped the wrapper and dove into the pack. At one point, he even bought me a box of Flair--probably two dozen packs--which was not cheap.

Still no Piazza.

As summer winded down (as summers tend to do), my own baseball season was coming to a quick close. One night after a game, my dad was driving a couple of my teammates home and we all got to talking.

It's funny. During the entire season--that whole spring and summer--I'd never mentioned my (insane) Piazza chase to anyone. And then, for whatever reason, our center fielder mentioned that he collects cards and that he had a few Piazzas he thought I'd want to take a look at and possibly trade him for.

I said sure, and half-heartedly asked if one of those Piazzas happened to be a Wave of the Future. I knew the answer already, so I just stared out the window as he said, "Yeah, I've got one of those. You want it?"

My dad hit the brakes.

Not fully, not dangerously, mind you, but he instinctively hit the brakes when my buddy said this. We were both shocked. Dumbfounded. Gobstopped. One more appropriate synonym.

I don't even remember what card it was that I traded the Piazza for. It didn't matter. It could have been a 1952 Mantle, or an '86 Jordan, or my kidney.

When we made the trade the next day at the ballpark and I held that Wave card in my hand, it was the culmination of a 4-month quest. And, when you're 10 years old, 4 months is a long, long time.

But as my favorite stories always do, this one ended well and I had my card.

Learning to Deal

Back when other children were spending recess playing kickball or standing on the sidelines wishing they had been picked to play kickball, I spent my time playing Magic: The Gathering.

Oh, sure, I had other ways to occupy myself on the playground--pretending I was the captain of my own starship or using the swings to travel back through time--but it was usually a safe bet that at some point I'd end up sitting against the side of the school building, amassing an army of fantasy creatures and waging war against my friends with all manner of fantastic sorcery.

Magic, at the time, was relatively new and still fairly straightforward: organize a deck of 60 cards, about a third of which were mountains, forests, and other types of terrain that you could "tap" to draw forth colored mana energy (black, white, red, blue, and green) to play other cards of a corresponding color, such as swarms of plague rats that got stronger with each rat you owned, and counterspells that obnoxiously returned the cards your opponent played to his or her hand. There were also precious artifacts that defied coloration and could be played using any combination of mana--these were my kinds of cards, and I felt like such a hotshot when I played with more than three or four artifacts in my deck.

The aim of the game was to drive your opponent's life point total into negative numbers with an onslaught of creatures and spells. The majority of the cards I played with involved dealing or preventing damage, destroying my opponent's cards, restoring my life points, gaining mana out of nowhere, and drawing more cards for myself. Anything card whose function required more than two sentences of explanation was "weird" and usually got traded away for another Lightning Bolt.

The game required some effort to learn, and at the time, I think we made up more house rules than we realized. Still, I enjoyed the friendly competition that was just as much battle strategy as it was advance preparation. You see, playing the game was only a third of the fun. The other two thirds were collecting new cards and creating the perfect deck.

My parents treated me to a booster pack of Magic cards at the local comics shop from time to time, long before I had any idea that comics shops sold anything other than Magic cards. I relished the joy and surprise that randomized packages of 15 cards could bring to a small child. I savored each and every one of the cards, never looking at the next one until I had finished taking in the eye-catching artwork of the one in my hand. In my head, I pieced together how these reinforcements would interact with the other cards in my deck, and what my hodgepodge fantasy army would look like in a movie, or on a real (imaginary) battlefield.

The limit of 60 cards per deck caused me to frequently switch out cards and construct brand-new "theme decks," consisting of nothing but instant-damage spells, or too many goblins for my own good. Everything that wasn't in one of my decks either got filed away in a binder filled with sheets of plastic card sheathes, or was used in negotiations with my friends to acquire new cards.

At some point I received a rather comprehensive handbook of rules clarifications and cards listed by rarity, which automatically made me the resident expert on Magic: The Gathering. I confess to abusing this newfound knowledge by occasionally conning my friends into parting with some impossibly rare cards (all of which, I might add, are now worth a buck fifty at best--the cards, not the friends). In retrospect, I must have been conned out of my fair share of rare cards that I didn't realize were rare, so we're probably even.

It didn't actually matter whether the cards were any good--if the book said they were rare, I would hide them away in a special, individual plastic sheath and bury them safely at the bottom of my big plastic deck protector, a funky black box with a monstrous look about it that transported my favorite deck around town.

At one time or another, I was the proud owner of a Shivan Dragon (which was cool because he was featured on the box of the starter set), a shiny card signed by someone who had used it in an official tournament, and a Force of Nature (think Swamp Thing on fantasy steroids), as well as several cards that were not all that exciting other than the fact that they were from a discontinued print run, or in German.

Rarity aside, the cards I favored were red (lots of instant damage--shoot first; think up strategy later), white (lots of fidgety little disposable creatures and excessive amounts of healing magic), and green (lots of big monsters with special abilities). I tended to avoided black (too many undead creepy crawlies with ugly pictures on the cards) and blue (which did all sorts of crazy things except deal damage, therefore requiring too much complex thinking for this elementary-schooler to cope with).

I'm sure my tastes and strategies would have evolved if I'd had the opportunity to continue playing, but when I moved and started sixth grade in a completely different town, I found that most people hadn't even heard of Magic: The Gathering. I managed to rope my sister and one or two of my friends to play a few games here and there, but there was no one to trade with, and no surprises in combat, because we almost always played with one of the decks I had created.

I did keep in touch with one friend from elementary school, and any time I got to see him, we'd bring our Magic cards and have ourselves a little duel. Typically, unless I lucked out and got four Lightning Bolts in my first hand, he would use some elaborate system of elves and forests to summon the most powerful monster conceivable from the depths of his deck, and have enough mana available to pull him out and decimate me before I could rally my goblins to glorious...defeat.

Eventually, it didn't matter how carefully I crafted my deck, or how lucky the draw--my cards and knowledge of the cards were outdated, and without having the luxury of testing my mettle against other people's carefully crafted decks, I had no idea how to face these sleek new cards that required more than two sentences to explain.

I had all but given up on Magic by the time I left the sixth grade. No new challengers, and only one old challenger with decks that were impossible to beat. Plus, schoolwork started to pick up, and I started pursuing other hobbies.

Still...I continued to collect booster packs--if only one or two a year--to keep a loose grip on the pulse of the game, and to keep the flame of hope alive that someday, I could rally my armies once more to trample an opponent who never quite developed a strategy to defend against a barrage of Lightning Bolts.

Flashback Week

We here at Exfanding Your Horizons have made the unprecedented decision to follow through on something we promised in our three-year celebration: we're preparing for a flashback week, bookended by Alex's regular Waiting for Wednesday column, to go back in time and discuss some geeky (and most likely quite heartfelt) stories from our youths.

Assuming we stick to the plan, you can expect to hear at least one tale each from elementary school, middle/high school, and college. Or, if you prefer not to dwell on the educational system as a means of measuring time, we'll be looking at our pre-teen, teen, and post-teen years.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you might be expecting us to spin yarns about baseball, video games, comics, and science fiction. Writing about our younger days (and really, we're not all that old) provides ample opportunity to flesh out the roots of our favorite interests, as well as to surprise you with stories of the fandoms that we have somehow avoided mentioning all this time.

There's a wealth of untapped history to share. If there is anything in particular you'd like to hear about, we welcome your feedback in the comments section (and you don't need to register an account to leave a comment--that's how much we love you).