Yesterday, I had a very funny experience that drove home for me how much less like a geek I look in real life, than I do in my mind.
I went out to a late lunch with a co-worker and a former co-worker, both big Science Fiction fans; indeed, people with specific roles and responsibilities at Dragon*Con, the largest science fiction convention in the world.
Current co-worker doesn’t actually look like Meat Loaf, but you can’t really describe him without making reference to the musician. Imagine a dark skinned Meat Loaf with black hair that goes half-way down his back, normally seen in public wearing all black, including a black leather trench coat.
Former co-worker is also a big beefy dude, with a shaved head and scruffy goatee.
In the parking lot after lunch, we were giggling about a bumper sticker near our cars. Actually, a combination of stickers:
Yes, My Tits Are Real: So Is My Penis
Right above a commemorative license plate acknowledging the car owner’s status as a Veteran of the United States Army.
And then a bumper sticker reading:
Jesus, Save Me From Your Followers
As it turns out, my co-worker has a podcast in which he mostly interviews people with unusual kinky sexual interests.
He decided to leave a note, asking the car owner for an interview.
While we were standing around in the parking lot, another car pulled up next to us. I noticed the high end car seat in the back before I noticed the man getting out — until he said, in a voice full of concern, “Liza?”
It was a dad from our old day care, the father of Noah’s friend Maggie. We really like him and his wife, and their daughter is a sweetheart. But they do make us feel really old — we don’t know for sure, but we think the age difference is more than 10 years, could be 14.
“Oh! Hi Chris! How’re you? How’s Maggie?”
“Is everything ok here?”
I suddenly saw the scene from the outside:
Pregnant suburban soccer mom in a pink floral dress standing around in a parking lot with Meat Loaf and his similarly intimidating-looking friend.
“Were you in a car accident? Do you need a ride?”
“Oh no — everything is fine! These are my co-workers, Dave & Kevin. We were just having lunch. Did you see these bumper stickers?”
We had a few more moments of reassuring conversation while Meat Loaf finished his note to the other car, then all parted ways. (And did I mention that I’m absolutely charmed by Chris’s chivalry?)
Meat Loaf and I got back in his car, and he asked, “What was that guy’s deal?”
In that moment, I also saw what I’ve always loved about hardcore geeks, and why so many of my closest friends in high school were the teenage versions of these co-workers.
Hardcore geeks might be skeptical when they first meet someone who looks like me, but when they see that I read the same books they do, share a quirky and intelligent (if unusual) sense of humor, and speak at least a dialect of their language, that becomes who they see. Not the appearance of the pregnant suburban soccer mom, or in high school, the preppie upper-middle class girl.
In high school, I refused to see anything odd in the way it looked when I ran around, usually alone with group of scruffy guys in army surplus or leather jackets. God forbid that you should have described me as preppie. My head would have exploded, and I’d probably ripped yours off in the process. Ignore the fact that I was wearing a turtleneck or button-down and a nice wool sweater approximately 75% of weather appropriate days. Or one of my mom’s suits on debate meet days.
What’s nice is to have the perspective, now, that I can no more change my ordinary and comfortable way of presenting myself than I can change my quirky sense of humor, intelligence, or enjoyment of science fiction/fantasy reading material.
