Yes, I am a geek. Quite, actually.
I have my street cred, I've edited Wiki, I have three different Starfleet uniforms, my office has a collection of Gundams and Neon Genesis Evangelion figures. During the evenings after their baths, my infant sons were treated to episodes of original Trek.
Makoto tells people that when Mr. Spock has a beard, that means he's a bad Spock.
After an afternoon of chopping wood for next winter and bringing the ax back to storage, I couldn't help but put a fatherly arm around my eldest's shoulder and tell him that Daddy didn't want to be an English teacher, no, he wanted to be... A LUMBERJACK!
I am a geek, and as many fathers can attest to, there is something deep within the male psyche calls to us, it speaks to us about our children, specifically our sons. A wise man once noted that, for a guy, the ONLY other man we not only can stand to see beat us, but whom we want to, need to, see beat us is our son(s). The drive of fatherhood is rather focused on the job of preparing these small, wonderful, dependent, little people to grow, change, and eventually best us in our own game to such an extent, they no longer need us.
And I am a geek which means that my game is a bit... well, geeky. That wouldn't be so much of a problem I think if Beloved happened to be a geek to.
Sadly, Beloved is many, many things, a geek is not one of them. She shuns Star Trek, couldn't tell you the difference between Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk, hates that I like to wander around Akihabara when I'm in Tokyo, derides the fact that her husband likes to read comics and manga, and of course cannot fix a computer if her life depended on it.
Mothers, like fathers, want to impress their interest on their children.
Thus I admit that Makoto and Hikaru have had a rather... split... upbringing. The fighting between Beloved and I is rather subtle. I load Star Trek into the DVD player, she changes the channel to J-Pop music. I teach my sons the best of Monty Python, she responds with classic Japanese fairy tales. I treat my sons out to looking at an annular eclipse...
Ok, I won that one, you couldn't beat that one.
She however vetoes my notion of mini-Starfleet shirts and instead buys everything our sons will wear to her tastes.
The battle has been wagged back and forth since the birth of Makoto, adding Hikaru to the mixture had just made it worse as now it's three boys against one woman, but determined she is. Strong in the ways of the Force and all that. Her main weapon of choice is the fact that she controls the kitchen.
I want it know that I love to cook and I am a damn good one, but I admit that she's better and she has time to cook whereas I'm busy running from class to class.
But a geek has a certain, shall we say, food intake. When one thinks geek, sad to say, green salads does not come into play. Barley tea is not the geek drink of choice on a hot day and no geek would really consider natto more than anything other than an abomination.
So while I might get in some TV viewing... she has won on the food. It's rather sad to see a four-year-old demand more green salad for dinner and declare that broccoli is his favorite food.
On the other hand though... that same son DID try to use the Vulcan nerve pinch on his mother in order to escape the brushing of the teeth... Perhaps there is hope after all.
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