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Sep
It doesn’t happen over night you know, and you are by no means born that way: becoming a Geek mom is a process. If I look back I can remember scraping up 25 pennies so I could cash it in for a quarter to play Pac Man at the Jiffy Mart, just one more time. Whoops, does that allude to how old I am? I was a late bloomer when it came to parenthood, so yeah, I could be considered an older mom, but then again, that’s all about the Geek, isn’t it? No need to start a family or get married early young! There are technical careers to be had and video games to be played. Books to be read, and many many movies to be seen and discussed at length, and how can my music collection grow when I’ve got to buy diapers? Kids? No way! So many many things to do and gadgets to buy before children enter the picture–if they ever enter the picture that is. But I digress….
In High School, my geekdome was masked by other various social activities, but it was still there. I may have ran with that ultra-cool drama crowd, but underneath it all, I was still a Geek. I still snuck off to arcades to play whatever new game was out (hello Dragonslayer!) and saved my hard earned cash for the new Nintendo system (or was that in college?). I remember closing my eyes at night and seeing visions of Mario and mushrooms still tattooed on the back of my eyelids.
My college years were spent fine-tuning the inner Geek, and it was so much easier since the Geek/non-Geek ratio was so much higher there. Not only where there many more male Geeks, but some females to boot–and get this, there were cute boys that actually wanted to date Geek girls. So I could put on my Chuck Taylors with a beat up Beatles t-shirt, some torn jeans and my hair color D’jour and guys would still hit on me–amazing!
Post college meant getting a job, and though my heart and degree where in creative writing, it was the 90’s– so being a Geek with the ability to understand other Geeks and write about it was a job I could get paid at. It was called technical writing and I was able to stick my tongue out at everyone that said, “You are an English major?–Are you going to teach High School?”
So, no I wasn’t writing the great American novel, nor a screenplay for the next box office hit, but I was writing, and I was getting paid for it to boot! And I was getting to know even more Geeks, oh joy! This was the time when I was introduced to some serious Geek fun, like CCGs (Collectible Card Games). I started with the mac daddy of them all Magic: the Gathering. I would actually go with people from work to lunch and we would play during our lunch break! making sure the tables were clean and dry so our cards would not get damaged. Oh yes, all true. I still have the many boxes of cards to prove it.
And then there was the after-work LAN parties! Lots of demons and aliens to kill. Yes, the inner-Geek had truly taken over, and it was all good!
But there comes an actual time in a woman’s life where she looks at her age and where she is at and has to decide whether or not she wants to have children. It’s just a fact, that eventually she won’t be able to have kids. At 25, kids were far from a thought for me, but at 30? Wow, not only could I hear that clock, but I was ready to start on the path to make that all happen. Marriage and children were still a far off scary though, but the thought of never doing it was even scarier.
Three years later, I married my husband, a fellow Geek like myself who also wanted kids. Less than a year we talked about trying to start a family and within the blink of an eye, I was holding a positive pregnancy test. Little did I know that my life would completely change. But I refused to put the laptop away and start baking cookies. I still wanted video games for Christmas and a subscription to PC magazine, I was about to become Geek Mom.
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