Wired has a list of 10 annoying habits of a geeky spouse and it made me giggle, so I thought I’d share.
My favorite from this list?
7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids – Long has my plush vorpal bunny languished atop a tall bookcase, waiting for the day when my kids are old enough not to be scared by its huge bloody fangs. And how to properly explain my model of Minas Tirith to kids not quite old enough for The Lord of the Rings? I mean, if we say “You remember The Hobbit? Well, it’s in the same world, but a country not mentioned in that book, and it figures heavily in a later story,” that will only prompt a thousand questions about it. That’s not a bad thing, of course, but it can get a bit tiresome. At least the Warner Brothers cartoon sericels hanging on the walls are easily explained by simply putting in a DVD.
Yeah, I have toy collections too. And my comics are overflowing the bookshelf and competing with far weightier tomes on political science, classic literature (and, um, fashion magazines).
My own annoying geek habit that doesn’t make the list? When I lived in South Carolina, I would drag my then-fiance all the way to Savannah every Wednesday to buy comics. He’d flip through the same few horror comics while I poked around the selection at the shop, and he’d quickly get bored and end up waiting outside. Any time we went out of town? I had to find the comic shop, ASAP. Then I’d make him drive home so that I could promptly ignore him to devour my new DMZ, Fables or Nextwave.
What habit do you guys have that drives your significant other up a wall? Or have you been lucky enough to find someone who’s as geeky as you are?
March 16th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I don’t think it’s so much a number of habits as it is the lifestyle for me, lol.
Seriously, my girlfriend of three years has to tolerate me constantly talking about comics, creators, obscure stuff related to comics and reassuring her that my weekly buying frenzy doesn’t affect our dates and my getting her presents. She’s too kind to me.
March 16th, 2009 at 5:43 am
I think for my wife, it’s just the Wednesday thing. She doesn’t get too upset over it, but I know she does find it annoying at times that I have to make sure a trip to the comic book store fits in with whatever we might have planned for Wednesday evening. She also thinks my massive DVD collection is absurd, but she doesn’t badger me over it, either
March 16th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I’m lucky. My wife accepts and in some cases embraces my geekiness. I have a bed specially made to fit long boxes under it, action figures everywhere, we moved away from the city I lived in over a year ago but yet she lets me drive 1.25hr one way to keep my LCS job, ebaying comics,half our son’s wardrobe and room decorations are comic related, trips out of town involve other comic stores, trips to Wal-Mart include the toy & DVD sections, references, t-shirts, my GL ring,and so much more. When I met her, she already was a sci-fi fan that watched wrestling and was a movie buff. Our DVD’s when combined has dwarved some video stores. She gets involved and asks questions and only gets after me when I’ve had my nose in a book for too long.
Long story, short (probably too late for that): She’s awesome!
March 16th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Same here, fuzwadd… My wife’s pretty awesome. She’s not really into the comics thing, though she’s read some in her time (ranging from Golden Age Superman to Gaiman’s Sandman) and she’s enjoyed the better comic book movies out there.
She’s a fellow geek through and through though… We met over a Star Trek newsgroup on Usenet after all! Turned out we were going to the same university, didn’t know each other yet, and she was in need of a TNG episode that she had missed. I had it on tape.
The “10 habits” made us laugh since we’re guilty of at least eight. I don’t have to explain my geeky toys to my daughter though. She digs most of them, and sometimes even asks to play with them (I always say “Yes”).
One habit that I didn’t see, that we do a lot, is peppering our conversations with quotations from our favorite movies, shows and books. Star Trek and The Simpsons come up a lot, and nowadays we quote Lost on an almost daily basis. We also like to make the occasional Shakespeare reference too.