I was born at a very young age to a medium sized loving family. We maintain the strength of our heartfelt affection for each other through a combination of distance and infrequency of communication. It works well. Went to university to study Physics. Left having discovered more about sex and drugs than the mysteries of the quantum or cosmic. It was during this time that I acquired my superpowers. A friend pursuing a biology degree rescued a Liebig condenser that was being thrown out and re purposed it as a bong. Why would it be discarded you ask? Well turns out it was low level radioactive waste. So just as Peter Parker was transformed through radioactive spider venom, we all gained the proportionate strength, speed and intelligence of a pot plant
At this point I consider the existence of 1994 to be entirely hypothetical. It would seem that time travel is a bonus ability with this particular set of powers but so far, have only been able to skip forwards, not back. Sex was a new-found avenue of study and when my lab partner in this experiment moved to London to follow her dream I moved too. To follow her and to dream. There in the big smoke I sought gainful employment and found that the most marketable skills I'd learnt were not in those physics lessons where I learnt to split hairs if not atoms. Nor the drugs, the sex or even the juggling whilst stoned but how my CS graduate friends arranged their social calendars. It was the University’s computer network that equipped me for my career. This was before mobile phones and texting. Checking who was online, what they were doing and then being able to transfer messages and images back and forth required some small level of understanding. This turned out to have far more real-world applications than anything I’d else bothered to learn. So, I taught people how to do the same. Then I helped other people who ran into problems using these computer networks and eventually I started building and maintaining the networks and systems themselves. Somewhere in the background of that career story there was a personal life too. Love’s young flame was extinguished through a mixture of mismatched ambitions and hubris. And so, I set off on more wide ranging experiments that eventually exhausted both my financial and emotional stability. I was not well placed to cope with the untimely and unexpected death of my Mum. It was not long after the turn of the millennium that the City spat me out and I ended up penniless, jobless and sleeping in my childhood home. Thanks Dad. When I got back on my feet it was in my hometown and it was a hometown girl who loved me enough to forbid me any more class A drugs and luckily for me, I loved her enough to let her. Eventually I’d even quit smoking for her and our children. In fact that was something I did many, many times until finally I gave up smoking for myself and that seemed to stick. I find that I no longer have the stomach to even drink heavily any more. It may be said that I have grown up. I have certainly grown out of many things. Not least my jeans. Happily married with three adorable children and a Border Collie. Not everything I’ve ever dreamed of but a close as I’m likely to get without a lottery win.