Mini-Matt

There is a Simpson’s episode I love. It’s the one where Bart wants to jump the canyon on his skateboard. He starts off jumping smaller stuff and at one point he is trying to jump a car. The quarter-pipe is too steep, he goes straight up, and then back down, landing on his back in the road. His friends all gather around his unconscious body.

You think they're going to help him, but then they yell, “Bart’s dead!” and scatter, leaving his presumably dead body behind.

I love that episode because it reminds me of two of my favorite stories from Matt's childhood, one of which found its way into my first novel. You'll understand why when you read them.

Enjoy.

The Epic Adventures of Jackson and Toby

Matt Welty and I first met at a Dungeons and Dragons game (2nd Ed Advanced DnD I think) in 1988. I’d recently moved to Orange County from Kentucky and didn’t have a lot of friends. I didn’t realize at the time how much the culture shock was hitting me. All the societal rules I’d grown up with were different in Orange County. I didn’t have my familiar group of geek friends to hang out with on the weekends, or the track and cross country team to make me feel like a part of a team.

The first thing I do when I move to a new city is find the local comic and hobby store to seek out people I can immediately understand. In this case it was a store on El Toro Rd called Comic Quest. I’d managed to befriend and game with a couple of the employees when the owner, Rich Grinnel, invited me to an after-hours ADnD game at the store. I was stoked, though I probably didn’t know what ‘stoked’ was at the time.