It’s a journal entry that makes me see red every time I read it; on an early summer day in 1997, I wrote about BotCon. I wanted to go that year and had been planning on making it to the Convention in Rochester NY with my ex and some of my friends. I had saved up some money, the only thing holding me back was a lack of planning from my ex. (More on that later.) However, I made a fatal mistake: I mentioned my plans to my mother.
She said I wasn’t going. If I did, she’d “make my life hell”.
Did I mention that I was over 21 at that point? Because I was. Legally, I could purchase and drink a case of beer if I had damn well wanted but my mother was treating me like I was thirteen.
I’m not exaggerating. She figured that as long as I was in “her” house, I had to completely and utterly obey her rules. Making it worse was the fact that I didn’t even consider otherwise.
It didn’t matter that I was legally an adult. My mother had the final say.
Now, when it came to that particular BotCon, I was SOL: my ex was little more than a hapless teenager and couldn’t plan for anything, let alone a trip of this magnitude. He sat on his hands and did nothing, letting dates pass by without saying a word. Me, I tried to press him into action but he dragged his feet about it all, so our trip was doomed before I had even pre-registered.
Oddly, my ex claimed he was a Transformer fan, but had no real interest in going to a Convention or possibly meeting any of the voice actors. I found that very strange, as all he wanted to do was get into voice acting; why wouldn’t he want to be in the same room as someone who had? I don’t understand and I don’t think I ever will.
BotCon 1997 didn’t happen. Yes, I’m still mentally kicking myself over that; I tried to plan everything out but nothing came of it. It would be two years later that I would be able to attend.
What I didn’t know at the time was that trip in 1999 was the start of me becoming an adult. It would take an email from a Prime to help kick-start things.
Iacon East 