When I wasn’t a chiseled six-foot-eight specimen of athletic superiority. When I didn’t own a multimillion-dollar command center with its own helipad, and Slick Daddy was nothing but a dream above my trembling lip. When the Doctor didn’t even have his master’s degree.

That time was when I was ten.

The year was 1992. I was just a little tyke growing up on the mean streets of Oakland, California. Small for my age, skinny, my voice high-pitched and girlish. Cute face, of course, but with a shockingly weak jawline.

My parents were decent, caring people. My papa drove a minivan and sold used Chevys for a living, and my mama was a grade-school teacher who always wore a fanny pack. They taught me the value of integrity, honesty, and hard work.

But they didn’t teach me any of the important stuff, you know? Stuff like video games, absolutely annihilating your opponent’s will to live, or looking really, really good.

When I was even younger, like six, I’d begged them for a Commodore 64. Begged.

“Mama! Papa!” I squeaked. “We’re talking high-impact Commodore prototype technology here. We’re talking eight bits of processing, a full sixty-four kilobytes of RAM with a VIC-II graphics chip. We’re talking Arkanoid and Pitfall! and Contra and more intensity than your minivan-driving, fanny-pack-wearing adult minds can possibly comprehend! I know I could be great at this! I know! Please please pleeeeeeeeeease let me have one!”

That’s right. Even as an emotionally repressed child, I had a flair for communication.

But shockingly, my parents refused. They wanted me to eat my breakfast and do my homework and read books. And not cool books, like this one, which might actually be the only cool book ever, and which obviously wasn’t even written yet. But instead lame sissy books like Little Women and various dictionaries and almanacs, and other crap my editor, Nigel, probably read when he was growing up.

Most important of all, they taught me to always, always run from danger. I was too precious to them. They wanted to keep me safe, but instead of toughening me up, they taught me to hide. They taught me to run. They taught me to be afraid.

So my mind grew weak and my muscles became atrophied. I’d lie in my bed at night in my little book-themed pajamas, scared of the boogeyman, scared of the darkness that dwelled outside my safe little house, whimpering for my mama and papa, doing everything I could to live up to their expectations and follow their silly little rules.

So yeah. By the time I reached ten, I was getting my ass kicked pretty much nonstop.