In a couple days, my wife and I will get in the car, drive six hours, and be surrounded by people who have loved me without preamble or condition for many, many years. Before I was published. Before I had a following. People who earned calling me "Pat."

It's my little heaven.

So I'm going to share a little #WonderFest story. It's not going to make sense to most of you.

WonderFest is a global mecha in Louisville, KY every year for unfortunate kids like me who never grew out of building model spaceships.

I have friends on every continent except Antarctica because of WonderFest. My newlywed wife and I spent a night outside Liverpool on our honeymoon staying with friends we made at WonderFest. It's a thing, and no, you're not invited if you can't build. Anyway...

...about ten years ago, a shitboat of us sci-fi model nerds were in a hotel suite getting our faces torn off by Molson XXX beer that had probably been smuggled across the Canadian border illegally by a Canuck compatriot.

We're three days into this Con. No one has eaten real food. Booze is flowing like Niagara. We're all talking shit. The Canuck looks like he's been passed out for an hour, chin on chest. We're jawing about WWII fighters for some reason.

I, being drunk, in an offhand fashion, talk about Canada's contribution to the war effort, which was considerable and honorable, and accidentally refer to the roundels on their planes as "Oak leafs."

Friends, I've been in real fights. I have seen people come to life and stand up at the slightest provocation.

But I have never seen anything like that Canadian resurrecting himself up off the suite's couch when I fucked up the tree species on the Canadian flag.

Blappy (we call him Blappy, no one knows why) openned his eyes, rose up off the couch like Nosferatu, and got right in my face shouting, "Oakleaf, motherfucker! Do I call it the Asterisks and Ribbons, you piece of shit!?"

Remember, we're in Louisville, KY, as all four-foot-nothing of this boiling cauldron of maple syrup jumps up in my grill.

What does everyone in the room do as Captain Ottawa lights off and insults our flag?

Laughs. At me. For fucking up Canada's flag.

I still hear about it.

We would all kill for Blappy. We have people who come from Canada, New Zealand, England, Hong Kong, Japan... every year. And they're family. Our big, dumb, drunk family.