When I was a little girl, I was convinced I would grow up to marry the prince of England.
Image from here.
As a fall-back, I decided I could be happy with someone without royal blood, so long as he was tall, strong, strikingly handsome, and very clever.
When I became a teenager and started to date, I realised the error of my ways. Suddenly, any boy without pimples sounded like a dream come true. Forget about tall—was he over 5′ 5″? Never mind about strong—could he beat my granny in an arm wrestle?
In the end, I felt blessed to find Poor Kyle—a guy who didn’t make me feel like I was settling.
What I never counted on, though, is that underneath my husband’s pickup-driving, tough-guy exterior…he is a total dweeb. A nerd. The Geek is capitalised to signify the extreme seriousness of his condition. As in, The Geek of the Nation. The Geek of the World. The Geek of the Universe. And, for geek’s sake, The Geek of the Galactica.
From what I gather, Poor Kyle wasn’t always The Geek. He started out like any other rowdy boy-child of the ’80s, but around middle school, he met his lifelong friend, Jeff. He became intrigued by Jeff’s ability to pass King’s Quest 4 (or maybe 5…the debate continues to this day), and before he knew it, they were staying in from recess to play computer games.
And here they are in 2009. Some things never change.
Anyway, I can’t complain, because Poor Kyle’s geekliness has come in handy on many occasions in my life. Numberless are the times I have called him, at my wit’s end with technological sorrows, and listened as his calm, knowing voice has talked me through my issues. He’s my tech guy, and if there’s a problem he doesn’t know how to fix, he’ll Google™ it until he can.
He’s funny, though. He knows he’s my tech guy, and he is loathe to give up that status. Sometimes he acts annoyed with my e-dilemmas, but I believe he’s always secretly glad that I don’t know how to fix them. It’s the same way with his fancy camera; he doesn’t really like me to use it, for fear that I’ll become a better photographer than he is. And heaven forbid I teach myself to use Photoshop™! (Don’t worry, PK—I still don’t know what an aperture or f-stop is. You’re still the best. Here, give me your ego and let me stroke it.) [Luckily his control issues end there. We never would have gotten to first base if he’d been the kind of guy who didn’t want me to learn how to drive or get a university degree or something equally insane. Girl power and all that jazz.]
They say if you give a girl a fish, she’ll eat for a day; if you teach her to fish, she’ll eat for a lifetime (or until all the fish are dead). But they never tell you about that third option—that sublime road less-travelled—which is this: Have a girl hook up with her very own tech guy, and he can digitally animate all the fish in the mother-loving ocean for her.
Marrying PK The Geek, in all his geekly glory, is very likely the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.
That, and learning to love Brazilians.
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