The Real ynglink

Alright, this is probably going to be what half of you skip, but oh well. My name is Gareth Meredith. Yes, it rhymes in a sorta-cool way. At the current time I'm 18 years old and live in Lincoln, Nebraska. Born in Brazil, Indiana on June 15, 1990, I've moved several times before this current location. At the age of 3 I was introduced into the video game world, falling in love with my first video game console: the Sega Genesis. I remember that the first game I had played on it was Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Soon after I fell in love with the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short. I became addicted to video games ever since my first encounter with them, they are my heroin.
My family has been very strange, so that never helped with getting me away from my "games". Simple story really, my parents divorced while I was 4, which in turn caused the constant moving. We moved in with my Aunt, who was a perfectionist with 2 children at the time. Then several other times after, I won't go into details as you probably can guess. My mom was with a bunch of guys while we were growing up, so that never helped. Most of them weren't the type of guy you'd want to raise children around. That aside, my childhood was rough, but it could've been much worse. Eventually we settled back down in the place I was born; Brazil, IN. We ended up living with my grandparents, which eventually ended up just myself living with my grandparents.
They're nice and have good work ethic, meaning that we didn't get along all the time. I did well in school when it came to tests and knowing the subjects, but my work ethic kept me from being an above average student. I refused to do homework for something I had already acknowledged and figured out how to do. Along with a case of A.D.D., there really was no hope for doing the work for me. I got in trouble for the stupidest things, meaning that I did really odd things (you can ask if you wish) that got me in trouble. I ended up with an interesting group of friends that accepted the geeky, stupid guy that I was. I say stupid because of the way I acted. This was great because of the mixed group it was and how fun it was to be in. I got to be myself and not have to worry about what they thought. It really allowed me to develop my own persona other than what half the other people were doing; trying to be cool. I've become one who isn't ashamed of what they do, of who I am, and best of all, I know how to have fun!

When the game was released I didn't think too much about it. I figured it was just like Dance Dance Revolution, just another "cool thing" and it'd move on. Well, one night I spent the night with a couple of my friends and they had brought the game with them. I figured, why not, and picked it up. I started on Easy, just to figure out the game mechanics. After I got the idea of what you do and what does what, I cranked up the difficulty to Medium. Played a song or two, and then jacked it up once more to Hard. This seemed to come easy as well, and my friends told me to go ahead and try Expert. Well, why not right? So I played yet again, on Expert. I struggled on some of the songs, just as any new person would on any song (possibly on a different difficulty), but I was able to pass the first couple of setlists on my first day of the game. My friends were astonished at it. Slowly word passed around school until it came back onto me, where I became known as "that guy" (as most ScoreHero's are known as also). I proceeded to play the games and even go to the lengths of borrowing full systems off of my friends. I guess I fell in love with the game series due to the good music in the game and how it feels when some people just watch you. I get some sort of "high" out of being able to impress others with something that's so simple as a piece of plastic I guess.

Well, aside from the word of mouth that my friends had spread about my relationship with Guitar Hero and myself, my peers had only witnessed one act of playing the game. My school held a fundraiser for Relay for Life and they used Guitar Hero to raise the money. It was a dollar a song and me and one of my friends decided that we were going to play it everyday for fun. Mostly because...we got to PLAY games in school! We didn't really plan anything aside from the fact that the last day we were going to play Free Bird, the most iconic song on the game. It was so awesome, one of the people even bowed down to me. So who says video games can't boost your popularity? :P
The following year me and the same friend wanted to push another Guitar Hero fundraiser, but we had to find a cause. Well, we found a teacher who was always looking for interesting fundraising ideas, so we joined the club and pitched the idea. We plotted out one before Guitar Hero 3 and one a couple months after. Each with a monetary reward. Yet again, I got to show off and have fun (and even get out of class for an hour and a half!) We eventually held a convo down in the gym for a playoff for "Spirit Week" and we got into an organization's newsletter! *Dances* I'll post the link once I find it.