December 13, 1980. My eighth birthday. It was a present from my uncle, and I don't think he quite grasped how important it would turn out to be.

I was that kid--the one with the extremely high IQ who was also very high on the autism spectrum. It's a frustrating place to find yourself, because you're aware that you're not fitting in socially, but you don't know why. In a lot of ways, it's like being color-blind; you know there are shades of color you can't see, but knowing it doesn't change the fact that you can't see them. In my case, I was color-blind to shades of social nuance. I knew I was going to say and do things that others would find off-putting and annoying, but I didn't know which things.

It was like I'd gone to use the bathroom, and while I was out of the room, someone came along and passed out the "Rulebook for Social Interaction." Everybody got a copy except for me.

But then, along came D&D, and all of a sudden, I HAD a copy of the rules. They were written down; I could read them, I could master them, and (in the limited context of the game) I could function as well as or better than anyone.

And the funny thing about roleplaying socially adept, confident characters is that, eventually, some of it rubs off, and it stops being roleplaying. Now, I'm never going to be a social butterfly, but I like to think I've gone from "weird and off-putting" to "harmlessly eccentric" in the eyes of most of the people who know me.

D&D didn't save my life, but it made it a hell of a lot more bearable.