It's all Geek to Me

The final version of this article appears here. This was my original draft. :D Play a little spot the difference and let me know which version you think is better.

---

I was never considered a geek. Nerd, yes. Geek, no. There’s a difference, you see.

Nerds were those of us who sat in front of the class, eagerly raised their hands to answer the teacher’s questions (think Hermione Granger of Harry Potter) and took inner pride at being the ones classmates always wanted to copy answers from during exams.

Geeks, if I was to offer a description, were nerds with specialization: the wonderful world of science. It didn’t have to be the real sciences like physics or chemistry. It extended to the fantastic sciences, the final frontier, going where no man has gone before and the ones from a galaxy far, far away.

As a nerd, I feel a certain affinity to the geeks. They were my not-so-distant relatives. Together, we made up that group of people in the outer fringes of the circle of the cool kids. I’ve long learned to embrace my inner nerd. What has surprised me, however, is the realization that I may just be a geek in the making.

Let me prove it to you.

1. I know what constructs refer to in the Green Lantern universe
2. I know what Skynet is and
3. I know that in the original comic version, Clark Kent and Lex Luthor were childhood friends and that Clark accidentally singed off all of Lex’s hair when he tried to save him from an accident. That’s the really reason why Lex is so pissed. He liked his hair. True story.

In my previous life I used to be a regular Jane whose knowledge of geek culture was shaped by Saturday morning cartoons and the early TV adaptations of superhero stories. Then I met him. He was to me what gamma rays were to Bruce Banner, what the radioactive spider was to Peter Parker and what yellow sun is to Clark Kent. You get the drift.

He had a passion for the fantastic: comics, science fiction, aliens, movies, you name it. I, on the other hand, had a passion for him. So in the interest of being interesting, I became interested. I listened to his stories, asked the insightful questions and made sure to remember the important details so we could engage in intelligent, meaningful discussions about this new universe. I was a padawan growing in the force.

Embracing the Geek side

I have become an impressive conversationalist on the topic of geek. Once, while out for drinks, my date and I ran into his friends from high school and they joined us at our table. The conversation turned into a discussion on planned movie-adaptations of their favourite comic book characters. I no longer remember what I had said, but it must have been reasonably impressive because the guys looked at me in surprise and complimented my knowledge of the genre. “For a girl,” they said. :P

this used to be my phone's wallpaper

More recently I went to watch Captain America with a couple-friend and as the movie ended, the husband and I began talking about our theories on the Avengers movie. When the wife asked who Hawkeye was, I launched into this answer, my words tumbling over each other. “Hawkeye. The archer of the team. Played by Jeremy Renner. Remember that scene in Thor? When he was trying to take back his hammer from the camp? The guy who was on the crane aiming at Thor.” Then, without thinking, I stretched out my arm and made the gesture of aiming an arrow.

Silence.

As the wife looked at me in my archer’s pose, it dawned on me what I was doing and what I had just said. We burst out laughing. My assimilation was complete. The Borg would be proud.

To be honest, I am too. Knowing your science fiction is like knowing cars or knowing gadgets. It seems to make you sexier in the eyes of the opposite sex. I like the stunned look guys get when I tell them that I was always the Paladin when we played D&D or when I opine that Boromir’s death scene in LOTR Fellowship of the Ring (the movie) reminded me of Sturm Brightblade’s death in the Dragonlance books. Besides, it’s fun when you’re the only girl at the table that can keep up with the conversation. But I will admit that sometimes, as I listen to myself talk, an amazed little voice inside my head is going, “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this…”

I was sharing with a friend my realizations on this newly-discovered side of me and she wondered why I was so surprised. She thought that my love for the LOTR movie commentaries was a dead give-away that I always had it in me. I think she could be right. Apparently, the geek is strong with me.

Hi, I’m Stacey. I’m a geek.