A Confession

I have a confession to make: I am... a nerd.  I have long suspected this, but after what happened today I was left with no choice but to acknowledge it.  I was in Target, completely caught up in trying to decide whether Tilex or Lysol is the better product when I heard music wafting my way from a couple of aisles over.  The music played for a good 30 seconds -- long enough to distract me from what I was doing, smile and silently congratulate my fellow shopper for picking such an awesome ringtone.  Then it hit me: what I had identified as an 'awesome ringtone' was nothing less than the theme song from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Seriously.

What this means (to me, at least) is that I have moved from being a nerd-by-association to a full-fledged, self-sufficient nerd -- still perhaps at the low end of the spectrum but certainly on the chart.  Until recently, I have always exercised my inherent nerdiness by simply being around nerds.  Usually not too many at a time, but there's often one in the mix -- at least when the mix is of my choosing.

As a kid, I loved comic books (although my parents would only buy me Archie) and I loved watching the Justice League cartoons after school (the Wonder Twins were my favourites) but I think the whole thing really started when I was about 10.  I remember sitting with 3 or 4 boys in the middle of the neighbour's garage, huddled around a makeshift table playing Dungeons and Dragons.  I was able to do this only a few times before my mother found out and forbid me from playing it.  Which is, I suppose, when I realized I needed to become a clandestine nerd.  From then on, I simply found friends who were outrightly nerdy and watched and learned from them -- without actually getting involved too much myself.

It's only been in the last couple of years that I've begun letting out my inner nerd, mostly without even realizing it. Recently, I noticed that I actually knew enough about nerd culture to understand basic humour and conversation and to start including myself as one of them.  The internet has also made life easier for us closet nerds: reading xkcd.com religiously, "liking" George Takei's Facebook page, watching The Guild and playing World of Warcraft can all be done from the safety and privacy of my own home.  I'm not embarrassed about my nerdy tendencies (the popularity of The Big Bang Theory has proven that there's a little nerd in all of us) but there are still not that many people out there who can relate, so I keep it quiet -- at least long enough for me to figure out who knows when Star Wars Day is.