I’ve only recently started listening to the podcast, these past two editions being my first.
I have to admit, I am rather moved by the geek testimonies (geekimonials?) that I have heard. It got me thinking, “Have I REALLY come out of the proverbial geek closet yet?” The answer, to my own displeasure, is a resounding ‘no.’ As much as I would have liked to make myself believe to the contrary, I’m still living inside a cocoon. But now, I think that it’s finally time I break the nerd shell and be released. Below, you will find my geekimonial.
It all started back in 1990. I was just a young buck then, and I sat down on the couch to find something to watch on TV. So there I was flipping through channels, trying to find something entertaining, when I stumbled across the program that changed my life forever. That program was Star Trek: The Next Generation, the episode was “The Defector.” The first images I saw were of the Romulan Warbird chasing after their own scout ship. This was my first experience with anything sci-fi related and, needless to say, my mind was completely and utterly blown away by what I had just seen. I never looked back. Star Trek had changed me from the inside out, and I’ve been a geek from that moment on. I was the only kid in school who dressed up like a Jaffa from Stargate (the original movie) for Halloween, the only kid who thought Klingon cranial ridges looked incredibly awesome. All the other kids in class drew pictures of fire trucks, fancy cars or their families while I drew pictures of Commander Riker and the Enterprise. I brought my Star Trek toys to school so that I could play with them at recess (at first by myself, but I found one other person to play with later on). By age 10, I could tell you how a warp core and a cloaking device worked, what tachyons were, and the difference between tetryons and verterons, and thus, everyone thought that I was the smartest kid in class. It didn’t help that they were correct in their assumptions, since they only way they’d talk to me is to see if I knew the answer to their homework questions.
And that’s pretty much where the torture began. There were not many kids my age who were into the same things that I was, and as such, I was picked on nearly incessantly. My two friends who were also into the “geeky” things were ostracized the same way. But my geek zone expanded far beyond Star Trek and sci-fi, and I believe that it was the catalyst for an exceptionally lonely childhood and adolescence. The fantasy geeks didn’t like me because I was a football geek. The football geeks didn’t like me because I was a band geek. The band geeks didn’t like me because I was a choir geek. The choir geeks accepted me, because the vast majority of them were geeks about something else as well.
Then I went to college. I went to a small, private school of roughly 3,000-3,500 students. And even though it was small, it was still socially segregated- where all the geeky kids lived in Dorm X, while the jocks lived in Dorm Y. I quickly learned that this system is a geek breeding ground, a place where we geeks can come together to grow in and share their geekness without fear of persecution from the majority of the student body. While I lived in the “geek dorm,” I was still shy and reserved about my geekness- even though I was in an environment in which being a geek was socially acceptable (which, as we all know, is hard to find). I locked myself in my room with the doors and blinds closed so that nobody could see me building my Star Trek CCG decks, or playing Freelancer, StarCraft and later WoW. I cloistered myself into my safe zone, and rarely came out. I hid all of those things when in the company of others, pretended I wasn’t interested and lied to myself and everyone around me about who I really was.
I met my wife in college, and it took me a very long time for me to open my inner geek to her. Slowly but surely, I started to reveal small facets of my geek self to her. At first, she wasn’t sure how to respond to them. She accepted those parts about me because they are a part of who I am, but she didn’t fully understand or appreciate those facets and, unknowingly, cause a lot of the same negative things that had plagued me since childhood (strange looks, negative comments about the things that I enjoyed, et cetera). We’ve been together for six years now, and only recently has she really started to understand why I like the things I do, and has actually come to like them as well; I made her watch the entire series of Star Trek: Enterprise, and now she’s almost as much a fan of Trek as I am. She’s also jumped onto the football geek bandwagon, which was a much easier step for her to take.
I have started to come out of the closet as a geek lately, but only in front of my wife. In my longing for geek community interaction, I stumbled across the GWC podcast. I subscribed, but didn’t immediately start listening, most likely due to fear of inner persecution and trying to convince myself that being THAT geeky is a little too geeky, even for me. Five weeks after I first subscribed, I listened to to the (then) latest broadcast entitled “Geekdom, Part I.” At the end of that broadcast, I felt that I should let the world know who I really am. But I had to really work hard to talk myself into it, to really accept that I would actually be accepted by those around me. I’ve always thought that being a geek was something I did indoors, away from the sight of the general public. Releasing myself unto the planet as a true geek is a very frightening concept, especially if you’ve lived in fear of it for your entire life. I only hope that this big step that I am taking will be received graciously by the GWC community. As much as I talk about “coming out” and revealing my geek self to the world, I find comfort that I can still hide behind avatars and forum nicknames. Maybe someday, I can tell it on a mountain, but the though of that still scares the hell out of me.
Which brings me to today. I have never said many of the things I have written in this geekimonial to anyone else before, even my wife (she knows I’m a geek, but not the how, why or when of it). As a result, I find that writing this has been a very long, emotional process. But now that it is written, I do in fact feel a great sense of relief and clarity mixed with fear and doubt. For even among other geeks, talking about this is scary and it is not at all easy. As I said above, I’m hoping that I will be accepted in this geek community.
I’m not entirely sure how to end this. There’s so much left that I want to say, but I cannot find the words. Perhaps in time I will be able to express myself better, even to all of you.
After a GWC meet-up there is a feeling of freedom that can’t be describe. Shooting the bull with people that actually catch your reference and don’t judge you is quite liberating. I recommend it ( it cost way less than a shrink 
)