See that beautiful woman sitting next to the ugly lump? That woman is my wife, and I am the lucky ugly lump next to her. My wife is a geek. I don't mean that in the mean way, or the sarcastic joking way. I mean it in the most sincere, endearing way I can. Obviously, I don't find the term "geek" offensive. I have two blogs that carry the word "geeky" in the title, to describe myself. I am a champion of the term geek, and that is why I am proud to say I am married to a geeky woman. But it wasn't always that way. I wasn't always married to a geek. I mean, obviously, I spent the first 24 years of my life a single guy, aimlessly wandering from fast food joint to fast food joint, trying to figure out my purpose in life, but I'm not talking about that time. I mean my whole married life hasn't been spent married to a geek. I'm not divorced, I've only been married once, and it's not like she had some accident that caused her to lose all of her memory so I could just reshape her into the person I always dreamt she could be (although, that does make for the basis of a pretty good story). Nope, that's not what i mean. I just mean she, Erica, was not always the geek she is today.
Before I go any further, I want to make it perfectly clear that no one should ever marry someone with the thought that you can change them over time. If you are not happy with who they are now, break up before it goes to deep. The kind of love you need in a marriage needs to be the unconditional kind of love, where you love the person no matter what they are into, whether they have seen Star Wars or not, you still love them. I also want to make it clear that I never dreamt of Erica being anyone else. That was a joke. If it wasn't funny, I'm sorry, please stop reading my blog. It is only for people that don't take life so seriously.
When we got married, I always knew that Erica was smarter than I am, kinder, friendlier, more money smart, basically better in every way. I definitely married up, and I was intimidated by that. She was just so incredible, and I did not want her to find out that I was a geek. I would like to say a closet geek, but up to that point, it wasn't. I was pretty open about it. I was just a fraud and insecure and thought if she found out, she would bolt. I threw away my comics, boxed up my Star Trek toys, and tried never to speak of anything geeky again. I think I had her fooled. Probably not, she is really smart, but a guy can dream can't he?
It all came crashing down when my mom invited us over to go through some old boxes I had at her house. They were the boxes of Star Trek toys and other geeky stuff. I was really nervous to let Erica see it all. I knew she would think I was a dork (not a positive term like geek), and she probably wouldn't want to be with a guy like me. Fortunately, my wife already understood this whole unconditional love thing, and although I loved her like that, I was scared that she couldn't love me like that. Some things, I learned growing up, are just unforgivable for some people, and Star Trek is one of those things.
This really isn't about me, so I'll stop that story right there, and tell you that she did not leave me, and instead, encouraged me to be myself, hence I am writing this blog today. No, this post is really about her, and how she became the geek of my dreams. When we first got married, we had very different ideas on what kinds of books were worth reading and what kinds of movies were worth seeing. She liked books that felt real, that could really happen. That meant Fantasy and SciFi were out. That was all I ever read. Still do. She felt similarly about movies. When she was a kid, she refused to read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, because it just couldn't happen. I don't think she felt very differently about it when we got married.
Here is the important part of the blog. If there is one thing I have learned since being married, at least for me, it is very important to take an interest in what your partner is interested in. That has been the secret to our success as a couple. She never liked SciFi or Fantasy or comics or super heroes before we got married. Now, she does enjoy them. Maybe not really, but she enjoys them because I enjoy them. Alternately, I never knew the difference between crocheting and knitting, or quilting and sewing and everything else crafty. I don't know if I ever set foot in a fabric store before I met Erica. I enjoy watching her work on that stuff. I don't know a lot, but I try hard to figure it out, because I know she enjoys it. The funny thing is, as you do take an interest in your spouse's interests, you grow together as a couple. You aren't just two individuals anymore, but one couple. That's the important lesson here, so you can skip the rest of this post if you want.
Now, Erica knows the difference between Marvel and DC. She knows her Starship Enterprise from her Millennium Falcon, her Kirk from Picard. She actually sits down and enjoys this stuff. Right now, we are working our way through Arrow season 2, and she is usually the one who wants to put an episode on. I can share inside jokes with her about this kind of stuff, and she gets them. She sees more of the symbolism in some of the stories and appreciates how a lot of the geeky stuff is pretty positive and encourages our kids to get into it. I am one lucky man. I was scared at first that she would not like the real me. I learned though, and I am blessed, that she loves me for who I am, not in spite of it, and that makes me pretty lucky. Her birthday was yesterday, and as I thought about that, it made me feel pretty blessed and lucky to have her in my life. I always wanted a geeky wife, and now I have her. She is the woman of my dreams.
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