“It’s my hobby but at the same time I can give back to the community”
I make costumes and when I first started doing this, most of my friends knew of the community, and knew of this but were like “you don’t want to be one of those nerds who make costume and dress-up dumb and look dumb”. I ended up starting to do it and being pretty good at and now two or three years later I go to events and I take photography and I go to hospitals and meet young sick kids as characters. It’s something for me, it’s my hobby but at the same time I can give back to the community while doing something that’s fun and part of me at the same time.
I’ve always been that nerd, the kid in class who was always correcting the teacher and getting in trouble for being too smart for one’s age. I kind of pulled back in middle school and high school from being that person because people look down upon it. It wasn’t cool to be the smart person at the time. So I pulled way back and started into this hobby and kind of became a little bit of a recluse, I didn’t go out much. I just built stuff in my room and then when I eventually started going to convention it pulled me back out into society.
When I was about 3 or 4 years old I was out with my parents shopping and I had found a baby doll. It was one of the cheap stuffed stomach and body with the plastic arms and legs. I wanted it really badly at the time, badly enough that my parents eventually bought it for me. I know my dad wasn’t particularly happy buying his son a baby doll. As I grew attached to the doll he got a name, Steven. I took him everywhere, I slept with him. And then my younger cousin was born about a year and a half later and he always always always followed me around and then eventually he wanted his own Steven. Eventually he got a doll but his was called Wilson or something like that. It kind of became a family thing, where we all had our baby Steven. I still have baby Steve to this day. He sits to the side of my bed.