Thursday, August 8, 2013

I’m Not Sure I’m a Geek at All (A #ThemeThursday Post)


Look at me writing a #ThemeThursday post on Thursday! Some of you will be aware that my last theme Thursday post, in which I shamed myself for 500 words, was late. This week’s theme is Geek Culture. (Last week’s theme was Rivalries. I’m sorry, I was supposed to have mentioned that in the actual post. I’m so bad at this.)

As you might expect, everyone else is blogging about what big geeks they are. If the title didn’t tip you off, I’m not entirely sure I’m a geek at all.

This is not an issue that comes up for most people. I mean, you either are or you aren’t. Most people wouldn’t waste a single second wondering if they’re really a geek or not. But most people’s grandmothers weren’t honorary crew members of the USS Enterprise.

I’m not kidding, Grandma was an honorary redshirt. She had a certificate and everything. It hung in her sewing room, where she worked and did the majority of her Star Trek watching. At one point my grandfather, who was a carpenter, built her a little model of the Enterprise, which hung in the living room for years and still hangs there to this day.

When I was a little girl, my favorite Star Trek movie was the one with the whales, because whales.



Things began to go…well, for lack of a better word, wrong right about the time the first Star Wars prequel came out. One of my aunts, the one who never managed to move out of my grandparents’ house, discovered that I had never seen Star Wars. I suppose everyone was so busy watching Star Trek that nobody had any time for Star Wars. I’d like to think somebody had noticed what happened with E.T. the Extraterrestrial and was concerned for the effect more aliens might have on my developing psyche, but if that were the case then they would have stopped coercing me to watch E.T. over and over again in an effort to prove that he really was a friendly alien, really.

Anyway, my aunt found out that I hadn’t seen Star Wars yet and made me watch all three movies in a row before dragging me to the theater to watch The Phantom Menace. To this day, I have not watched the other two prequels, unless maybe I watched them when I was with my ex, I don’t know, I’ve blocked out a lot of that relationship.

It should be noted that when I say “she made me watch them,” I mean she sat there next to me and delivered a running monologue explaining how all the tropes fit into the overall story archetype. I was not allowed to leave the room. I was 17 and did my best to fall asleep. In retrospect, I probably should’ve just tackled her; it would’ve saved me a lot of life problems later on.

But, I digress. There was a time when I would have identified as a geek, but that was before I spent my entire adult life discovering that I am not who I was taught to be. It’s not that I don’t like geeky things; it’s that I don’t like them enough to quote from them or collect their memorabilia or remember when they’re coming on TV. I like other things more, like athletics and not being pushed around. Those two things work well together, by the way. If I had known I liked those things when I was 17, some tackling would have gone down.

So, I don’t think I’m a geek at all. Unless we’re talking about books, of course, then I’m a total geek. Or maybe I’m actually a nerd, I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure you have to do math to be a nerd.


I'm a writer. You do the math.