First Things

I'm sarcastic by nature. Or maybe it's by nurture. Either way, growing up the way I did (i.e. short, skinny, and with a big mouth), it came naturally, either as some sort of defense mechanism, or as a means to strike back at the sophomores in high school who always looked down on me. Yes, I'm aware that that last statement can be taken literally.
Regardless of how the sarcasm surfaced, the sense of humor closely followed. I was told later on in life (by my wife) that I get my sense of humor from my dad. I don't know if either of us will agree with that: he always thought I played around too much; I thought I was hilarious. One of us was probably wrong. Probably.
So. That covers sarcasm and humor. Why I love puns so much is anyone's guess. I think it comes from a love of words. And that stemmed from growing up in rural Bladen County, where the nearest people my own age were miles away. I read alot. I wrote alot. I loved words.
I went to school to be a doctor. I hated the constant imagination-free regurgitation of ideas and facts. Turns out that when you hate something, you eventually fail at it. Go figure.
So I "dropped out" of "pre-med school." The last set of quotes is because I have no idea if that's a correct term. I mean, isn't anything before med school pre-med? Including not going at all? Whatever. I digress. Back to more about me.
I fell back on what I knew best: words. I became an English major. English Lit, precisely. Graduated UNCW with honors. And a minor in Creative Writing (CRW to all you out there who didn't know that those three letters in the course catalog could get you a degree). Then I applied to grad school and was subsequently shut down.
I guess that's when I stopped writing. Maybe subconsciously I harbored some spite towards a skill that failed me. Maybe logically I cut it out of my life because it was unproductive and, therefore, unnecessary. The strange thing was, I cut out reading, too. Not that I'm illiterate now; far from it, actually. But the words stuck with me. The puns, the humor, the technicality of it all (I love syntax and grammar. Hate me for it, I don't care), all of that stuck with me, even if I involuntarily tried to shrug it off.
Years later, my friends started telling me to get back on the horse. Not explicitly, mind you, but with little nudges and hints (a few demands) that I should start blogging. And that's this. This is that. The beginning. Maybe I'll do better than most bloggers whose works I've been secretly sampling (they're not in my links list, if you're thinking of looking) and actually push out a post of substance at least once a week.
Oh yeah, also: I love my wife. More on that later.