The Evolution Of My Geekdom: Fishy Edition

Hello there. It’s Goldfish. I seem to have taken a wrong turn and ended up on 33 Grams Of Fish. That’s not a very big fish. A 33 gram fish would be just over an ounce. That’s a pretty tiny fish. Better throw it back.

Anyway, what am I doing here again? Oh, right. As winner of the FOG Mad Lib Challenge Part 2, I owe Revis a guest post. And since I’m not very creative, I’ve balls-out stolen Revis’ series, The Evolution Of My Geekdom for myself. Ta-da!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away called Detroit, I was a little girl. Unlike some little girls, I wasn’t very girlie. I didn’t own anything that was pink. I was a tomboy. I climbed trees, rode bikes and made mud pies. I was a tomboy in a house full of women. The only male was my dad. The rest of the females were not tomboys.

I remember fishing with my dad. The rule in my house was you clean what you catch. My sister always threw her fish back. I cleaned mine. I remember chasing my sister around the yard with a beating fish heart in my hand. Did you know that fish hearts beat for a little while all on their own? I thought it was neat and the fact that it made my sister run around screaming was just an added benefit.

I wanted to see a little-known movie called Star Wars, the greatest movie that ever existed in the history of things that could ever possibly exist, in the worst way. My mother was against it. Space aliens and fish hearts and ick. No. I’m not taking you and that’s final. I begged my dad. He finally agreed.

It went something like this: POW! We watched it twice. My dad begrudgingly paid for three more tickets and we sat through two showings right in a row. My life changed on that day forever. I had never seen experienced anything like it. My sister and I finally agreed on something, and even though he couldn’t get a word in edgewise over our squeaky enthusiasm, our dad liked it, too. He took us to see the rest of the trilogy.

Of course, we had to have all the toys. Mom was still dead set on her opinion to hate everything Star Wars and refused to buy us any merch. Booooooo. Fortunately, we had grandparents and other relatives! We had most of the small action figures and some of the 12″ action figures. My sister had Luke, Leia, the Jawa and C-3PO. I had Darth Vader, Chewbacca, the Stormtrooper and R2-D2. Radical!

One year for Christmas, our aunt and uncle bought us the Millennium Falcon, our absolute pride and joy. We didn’t have it long. My mom was so angry with her brother for buying it for us that she gave it away. It wasn’t until many years later, when both my sister and I were adults, that she apologized for that. She actually watched the movies and said they weren’t half bad. If only she had done that when we were kids.

From there, my geekdom branched out into comic books and video games. We had a Radio Shack TRS-80. My mom got it for us under the delusion that we would use it to do homework. Silly, hew-mon. Mostly, we just played video games.

It’s educational!
Cosmic Fighter, TRS-80 Game

Look at those graphics! High tech, baby. I hate to think of how many cosmic fighters I shot down in my quest to save the galaxy. We used to get code magazines like 80Micro and Byte that had newsprint pages tucked inside with line after line of code. I remember spending three days typing in code from a magazine and was absolutely thrilled when, at the end of all my hard work, a clown head popped up and spun around! That’s all it did. It was a three dimensional spinning clown head. Three days work for a spinning clown head and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Then, I got distracted for a while. I thought I was too cool for Star Wars and spinning clown heads. I was a teenager. But it wasn’t long before geekery came back to me in the form of a boyfriend who played Dungeons & Dragons. “What’s that?” I innocently asked. Heh.

HELLS YES!
AD&D Players Handbook, c. 1980s, TRS Games

Thusly went my Sunday nights until we broke up, and even for a little while after, until my ex-boyfriend killed me off. Then, about ten years ago, I dated another bona fide geek who spent his Sunday nights that way, too. The boys are long since gone, but I do miss the game.

Nowadays, my geekery is still alive and well. I don’t deny it like I once did when I was a teenager. I don’t care if I’m cool or not. My geekery still thrives in the comic books I read (I read Walking Dead years before it was a TV show), the video games I play (Borderlands 2, baby) and even the board games I play (my friends and I are currently hooked on Dominion), and I still have an action figure or two on my shelf.

Spider Jerusalem action figure, Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis and Darrick Roberston, Vertigo

I haven’t played D & D in a while, but if anyone wants to start a campaign, let me know.