PIECES TO THE PUZZLE:
A Few Clues to the Biography of...



This is not meant to be my official autobiography.  There are many stories from my life and times that will get covered more extensively in the future, right here on this site.  There are several aspects of my life that you will be able to pick up by reading the things that I write each week.  It will become obvious that I am a television fanatic.  You will no doubt surmise that I am a general sports fan with strongest interests in professional football, college basketball, mixed martial arts, and NASCAR racing.  You will become aware quickly that I am a food junkie who enjoys visiting and ranking area restaurants.  These are the things that I don't need to tell you directly.  What I want to do in the next few hundred words is give you some of the random events and facts that have contributed to making me the man that I am.  Stories that are not all that interesting on their own, but when read together may start to fill in the blanks about me for you.  Don't read any boastfulness or pride into much of the following.  I know how much of a weirdo and general goof that I am, but I can't help but share...

The year was 1980.  I was born on a spring Saturday afternoon in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Hours later, Mount Saint Helen erupts in dramatic fashion, spewing nature's own pyrotechnics into the sky.  Random coincidence? You make the call.  But remember as you read on, that I was born with an innate ability to make a grand entrance.  Also in 1980, the band AC/DC released the song and album entitled "Back in Black."  File that away for now, but we will get back to it later.

Our tale will skip ahead a few years now, because that whole infant, toddler, and small child period are a little fuzzy for me and not very entertaining to read about, I'm sure.

Our next stop is circa 1987.  I was in the second grade, and a couple of events started to shape the mind and man that you are investing your time to read about, so we will address them.  First of all, the curse of near-sightedness struck, and I was forced to start wearing glasses to keep from running into walls and such.  Not a tragic event by any means, but bear in mind that in 1987 the eyeglass manufacturers of the world were not exacty targeting the hip seven year old demographic.  Basically, your choices were Elton John or Harry Caray.  Being a seven year old, the choice fell to my parents, and I was soon rolling to class with the Harry Caray Coke bottle deluxe models.  Oh yeah.  (For the record, if you don't get the Harry Caray reference, this may not be the website for you.  Go Google him, do some research, and come back.  Try to keep up, though, we are moving fast here at Collins Chronicles.)  Nothing goes better with large and unattractive glasses than a healthy dose of nerdiness.  Enter the elementary school "gifted" program.  At seven years old, I was pulled into a special class once a week, where I got to do things that were a lot cooler than the usual second grade junk, but being the first and (for a while) only kid in the program was my first indication that the world is fond of differentiating people on any basis, and ability to solve neat little logic puzzles faster than your classmates is as good as any.

Fast forward to 1990, and I am a fifth grade student with straight A grades and limited social skills.  Come on.  How cool were YOU at ten years old?  Why have we stopped here on our journey to present day?  Because, this was the year that I learned that you could use your intellect to be competitive.  I won a county spelling bee (and before you ask, no I did not win a regional or state spelling bee, because at this point I was too young, so one of the older kids I beat got to move on in my place.  I was robbed.  I DID however captain a team of fellow nerds to a state trivia bowl title later that same year)  Then, as we made the transition from elementary school to middle school, I cleaned up on the year end awards.  I never had to work very hard at school, but I was pretty fond of the awards, so I decided to keep on trying to win everything.

Let's skip middle school, because...well...wouldn't EVERYONE like to skip middle school?  It is just awkward and embarassing.

So we arrive at high school.  The first few days of high school are simultaneously uncomfortable and exciting.  The whole senior-freshman harassment was basically dead at our school, plus (and notice how long it took me to "conveniently" remember to say this) I am a rather big-boned individual, so I did not catch a lot of flack from the upperclassmen.  The defining moment of my high school experience actually came in about the first week of classes that first year.  In our school system, two decent-sized middle schools dumped into one decent-sized high school, so there was the inevitable feeling out process between both sides.  Everyone met their "alternate universe"counterpart, and I met mine in a Geometry class.  We will call him "Navy" (for a couple of reasons that I will not disclose in an attempt to protect the guilty).  "Navy" basically stated loud and clear to me that he was going to go on to become our high school's valedictorian (and he signed my freshman yearbook to that extent).  I told him that I begged to differ, and I was sure salutatorian would be a great honor for him to list on his college applications.  This challenge would have been incentive enough for me to keep my grades in order, but the finishing touch was the female teacher of said Geometry class (that overheard our constant dispute) flatly claimed that no male student in our class would become the valedictorian, and we would be lucky to get a male in the top ten.

Dateline: May 1998.  Graduation day.  In an ironic and fitting grand entrance, "Navy" and I shook hands at the back of the gymnasium before leading our class down the aisle for the ceremony.  I was the valedictorian.  Sure, maybe I missed some of the crucial social experiences that define your adulthood in high school, but I won our little challenge.  Along the way, I became our school's first National Merit Scholar and accepted a full academic scholarship to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.  Don't feel bad for "Navy."  He struggled with his bitter defeat and turned to a life of crime, but he is now tutoring Hispanic inmates to speak better English while finishing up a sentence for grand theft auto.  Okay, that is not what happened at all.  In all honesty, we became good friends to this day and he was in my wedding.  In fact, his backyard went on to play a key role in defining the person that I am today.

At the risk of sounding like a bad Jeff Foxworthy joke, I became the first high school valedictorian and National Merit Scholar in the known universe to parlay that powerful intellect into a scholarship at a professional wrestling training school.  How does one get a scholarship to professional wrestling school?  In my case, it was easy.  "Navy" and I (along with about a dozen of our friends) collected mattresses for weeks until we had enough to construct a makeshift wrestling ring in "Navy's" backyard.  We would met there every week and proceed to replicate as best we could the antics of Vince McMahon's employees.  (Vince McMahon is another good litmus test.  If you don't know the man, go Google him now and hurry back, but my pop culture references only get harder from here.  Consider yourself warned.)  Through much work, the tapes of those weekly beatings eventually found their way into the hands of a local wrestling promoter, and my official wrestling training began shortly thereafter.  The stories from those training sessions are going to be saved for another day (along with the day I lost my ear), but rest assued they will be "Chronicled" here soon enough.

After a short career as a pro wrestler in which I made many a grand entrance to the sounds of AC/DC's "Back in Black" (told you that would come back up) that included anything from bloodying myself to being hit with unopened beverage cans (both good stories for potential future "Chronicles"), I eventually buckled down and graduated UT with a degree in Logistics and Transportation.  Trust me, it is a real field.  Look it up, if you need to.  I will wait.

In 2001, I married a remarkable and beautiful woman, who is reading everything I add to this site CLOSELY, so the story of our meeting, dating, engagement, wedding and married life will all be added to the site in careful detail very soon.  We lived in four different cities in our first four years of marriage including a stint in North Carolina that will be documented extensively as well.

We are now residing in a house that we designed and built (with a wrestling ring in the garage...a lifelong dream fulfilled) in Louisville, Tennessee (pronounced "Lewis-ville" not "Louie-ville," so get it right).  My wife works at a title company, and I work in a cubicle as a transportation analyst for a global consumer goods corporation.  It is less exciting than it sounds.

Now for the touchy stuff.  The Collins Chronicles will occassionally touch on issues of religion or politics, so in the interest of full disclosure for those that are uncomfortable with the topics, here are my backgrounds in each.  My father is a Southern Baptist minister, and has been for as long as I can remember.  From the time I was weeks old to the present day, you could probably count on your fingers and toes the amount of Sunday mornings I have not been in church somewhere.  I prayed to receive Christ at the age of seventeen and was baptized shortly thereafter.  We currently attend NorthStar Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, a non-denominational church.  I will go into more and deeper detail as to my theological stances in the future, I am sure.  As for politics, I am now as apathetic as the next guy, I guess.  I was the president of the Young Republicans in high school and continue to vote Republican in all major elections to this day, but the differences between the parties seem to get smaller all the time, while they accomplish less and less all the while, so my political fire is pretty dim at this moment.  Color me disillusioned.  Out of respect to those who would not be comfortable reading them, any religious or political entries made on this site will be clearly labeled as such, so you will not hurt my feelings if you skip them.

I hope this little primer on me helps you to get a feel for the man behind the musings that are "The Collins Chronicles."  Sometimes I look back on the past 26 years and wonder how I got where I am, but hopefully this website will help us both figure that out.  I am the geeky little gifted kid at Highland Park Elementary.  I am the valedictorian of Lenoir City High School class of 1998.  I am a graduate of the Tennessee Mountain Wrestling school and the University of Tennessee (in that order).  I am "Big Daddy Collins" every time I step into the ring or hear "Back in Black."  I am a preacher's kid.  I am a happily married man.  I am one man making a living in the confines of one cubicle with a lot to say, and (hopefully) enough bandwidth to say it.  I am the founder, owner and operator of "The Collins Chronicles."  I am BDC, and I hope you enjoy the website.

Take it easy,
BDC
Sitting in a condo in Destin, FL.
12:51 AM EST
May 15th, 2006

Drop me a line at BDC@CollinsChronicles.com