Waking up didn't happen at once. Well, it did, but there were events leading up to it. In the beginning of 8th grade something started to change. I think your brain starts growing again at puberty, giving it a second chance to get it right. It tried, but as far as self-awareness was concerned, I was still quite comfortably out to lunch.Because I was so far out of touch, I was usually lost in some kind of daydream, most of which were short, scattered, and often didn’t make a lot of sense. On 10/19/94 however, one about a group of pirates stayed on and continued to build on itself, making permanent characters and locations. It was full of cliches, plot holes and ridiculous situations, but at the time it was enough to create something of a sort of primitive consciousness. My brain was watching these imaginary pirates go about their business like a cat watches a spot of reflected sunlight race across the floor. As it continued more cats came forward to watch until a pack of once uncontrollable animals became calmly transfixed as one. It lasted a staggering six months, but come April it began to falter and the natives were becoming restless. Just when it seemed that everything that had been accomplished was about to unravel, by pure glorious chance on 4/22/95, I met Her. Carmen Sandiego, head thief of so many educational computer games since the 80’s now had her own animated series. It wasn't the show that had gotten my attention, it was her. Carmen's character was not the norm in television. Though obviously the villain, she was no longer content to be the 2-D shadow of incarnations past. She instead recast herself as a high-minded Machiavellian, a brilliant, fantastic, enigmatic mystery that you couldn't help but fall entranced with. Time passed and I became less interested in the show itself and more so in Carmen, specifically the one that had taken on a life of her own in my head. Eventually she abandoned her original context entirely and began to claim autonomy, becoming something of a self-aware imaginary friend. My guess is that with so much of me asleep, Carmen claimed facets of my personality that I hadn't found yet or had failed to master. After she set up a permanent camp in the base of my skull, things sped up drastically. Fragments of information and sensory stimulation began to get through, coming down the lines that my intense focus on Carmen had created. I was floating just below the surface looking up, noticing the light filtering through the murky water that had I had never seen before. The world was coming nearer as the currents pushed me closer to shore. By June – July 1995, I was in the surf line where the sea Washes up debris of the lost on the beach. I just needed one big wave.