When I was twelve or thirteen years old, my best friend Gary Steele and I would daydream about what our lives might be like when we grew up. Of course, our view of adulthood was probably shaped in part by the comics we read, by the James Bond films we saw, and by such television series as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. that we never missed. But our daydreams generally involved a high-tech, gadget-laden lifestyle straight out of these realities.
Now I'm fifty-one going on fifty-two, and I realize that I'm living that very same lifestyle. Oh, I don't get to do the spy things and all that, but I do have all the gadgets. Tivos, DVD recorders, computers, wireless networking, mobile phones, GPS navigation systems, iPods... it's a James Bond fantasy, and it's all ours for a relatively low cost.
In fact, all things considered, I've been remarkably lucky in my life. Not only do I have all the gadgets that I dreamed of as a child, but I also have a wonderful house, I'm married to a woman I'm in love with, I have the time to do things that I enjoy, I still get to do fanzines (only now my fanzine is called Comic Shop News, and I can make a living doing it)... sometimes I wish I could let my twelve-year-old self know that sometimes it does all work out, and we really do get what we wished for.
Well, except for the Aston Martin and the international espionage...
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