Freaks and Geeks and Life

 I admit it. I'm a geek. I have been all my life. My mother was a Trekkie, and I being all of 3 years old when the original came out, I watched it with her. My father then took things further when I was 8 by presenting me with a copy of Tarzan. That was all it took, from there I went on to other ERB books like the Barsoom books, and ended up reading pretty much everything ERB wrote by the time I was 12. I then branched out into many of the other classic sci-fi authors like Heinlein, Silverberg, etc.

 Then came a little game called Dungeons and Dragons. By this time I was firmly in the only geek group in our small town, and my mother, figuring it at least got us doing something besides sitting around reading all the time (Remember, bookworms were bad back then!) she bought me the very fist one sold in Wichita County. I took it home, called my peeps, and that was all she wrote. We LOVED it, jumped into the whole gaming culture without looking back. My brother had returned from 11 years in the Navy, and he and I because the town's top gamers.

 Then came the computer. My brother had been involved with computers on ship, and since he was an electronics specialist, it was only natural that he slid right into computers. Programming came to him as easily as breathing, and when I was 15, he started a little side business, Platinum Software, the very first computer gaming company in Texas, and I became his game tester. This was back in the days of the green text era of computers. Home PCs had not even been thought of at this point, and my brother ordered his first out of an HP catalog, and build it himself. I spent nearly every Saturday at his house, testing the latest round of his current project, a D&D based text game.

 When I started dating in high school, anyone I would be interested in had to be intelligent, well read in the sci-fi genre, and preferably a gamer. As these were in relatively short supply, I had to expand my field to include non-gamers. On to college, and I discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism. Gamers and cosplay (Altho we didn't call it that back then.) all together, I was in heaven! I dated in the SCA community exclusively, mostly fighters, who were amazed a woman knew about armor. A head injury at 19 killed my fighting career, so I turned to armoring. Then I met my first husband, a swishy-poke (fencer) turned heavy arms fighter. Not a geek, which probably should have tipped me off that things would not end well with him. They didn't, and I was back in the dating scene.

 Fast forward 15 years, and I'm back in the gaming community, this time in the big city of Austin. Then the Internet and home computers became affordable, and the geek world opened up. The very first person I met in a chat room was S, my husband.

 S is a geek. He, like me, is second generation geek. To all outward appearances, he looks to be a mild mannered nerd, the kind that got shoved into lockers in high school. But appearances can be deceiving, behind that polite mask he shows to the public, is the heart and soul of a warrior. He is very easy going, but once his anger is aroused, don't stand in his way, or you WILL regret it. And when his mate or child is attacked, as one woman found out this past week, he will deal with the problem, and you will not like the outcome.

 I have problems with S's ex girlfriends and other women he's met over the years creeping out of the woodwork. These women treated him like shit, used and abused him, and then went off with some asshole. Usually things went wrong with the asshole, like they always do, and then here the women come, wanting to cry on 'the nice guy's' should before they are off to the next asshole. These women think it is OK to be friends and flirt with him, even tho he (And many times they) are married. They think he's 'safe', because he was never a jerk to them. And for the most part, he let them. Well babies, I'm here to tell you that you all have NO fucking clue what is behind my husband's polite mask, and it is NOT the sweet innocent little geek you all treated like shit. You do not want to piss him off, because much like a tornado, when he finally does get angry, that's the end. One of his exs, as you know if you are a regular reader, found out the hard way when she became totally inappropriate, actually coming to Austin to try to meet up with him. That did not end well for her, to say the least. She did not realize until a couple of days ago that he is not the sweet little pushover she thought. Not at all. I'm sure she was totally surprised at the "fuck off and die" email she got from him, which SHOULD have been sent long ago.

 It is NEVER appropriate to remain friends with an ex when you marry. And it is certainly NEVER appropriate to try to meet an Internet ex in person once they are in a relationship, and ESPECIALLY when they are married. I have no issue with opposite-sex friends, as long as they are not an ex. I have no exes in my group of friends, because when I'm done with someone, I'm done. Which is the way it should be. Hanging on to an ex because you think you can get something from them, like these women try to do with S, is wrong on so many levels. He let them get away with it because he is polite, and they take that to mean they can take liberties with him. Uh, no.

 S and I have weathered this latest round of an ex, and we will survive. This will be the last, however. He has purged all exes from his life now, and they will remain so, in the past, where they belong. Let them go troll some other poor guy. Mine is happy with me and me with him, and we don't need anyone else fucking with our calm. As Michelle Rodriguez's character Letty in The Fast and The Furious put it so succinctly, "I smell skanks". And I can smell a skank from miles away. Just because we are geeks does not mean we will sit there and take shit. Don't mistake my cordialness for an invitation. It's not. It is simply Southern politeness.