My dad was in the US Army when I was a kid. My family is primarily from the Pacific NW, and not particularly religious. When I was 5, my family moved to German

My dad was in the US Army when I was a kid. My family is primarily from the Pacific NW, and not particularly religious. When I was 5, my family moved to Germany. For me, it was a magical place, but and I fell deeply in love with it...but Germans aren't very religious, and we weren't while we were there, either. At the age of 10, my dad was reassigned to Ft. Sill, nearby Lawton, OK. You can probably imagine the culture shock of dropping into the buckle of the Bible Belt from agnostic origins. I ended up attending church services with various friends (which I had trouble making in Pentecostania) around the neighborhood, which were filled with fire and brimstone teachings, to include demoninizing D&D, which was lumped in with Quija boards, drugs, and premarital sex. The Southern pastors did a fine good job warping my young mind. So, I meet this kid named Teddy at school. I don't recall his last name, and sorry if you're reading this, Teddy. We have what would probably be called a "play date" nowadays, because my mom had to drive me over to his house, as it was too far for preteen cycling. We're having a decent time, mostly talking on the couch in his living room, when Teddy asks if I would like to play Dungeons and Dragons. Believing that merely opening the box for the game would have set loose invisible demons to whisk my soul away to Satan's bottomless HQ, I may have freaked out a little and asked to leave. The stigma of D&D stayed with me for a long time, even into my late teens/early 20s, and I regret never having gotten to play D&D, now that everyone's getting back into it later in life. Even knowing now that the stigma of D&D isn't real, there's still a vague, magnetic force present in my mind, pushing me back when I think about sitting down to play it.