Tag: geek

By Any Name

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(scene opens in cluttered dinning room, Carrot behind laptop at table)

(Beta enters from kitchen)

Me: (looks up, sees papers in Beta’s hand) Oh, did dad print out the Belegarth waiver for you?

Beta: (pouts) Yeah. He pre-filed a bunch of them so they’re on hand to sign. Look what he did!

Me: (takes papers shoved at her, eyebrows raise) Your fighter name is “Skippypants McDidn’tPickaName”?

Beta: Can you believe him?!

Me: I can. This is what happens when you don’t pick your own name. A name will be given.

(Husband enters from kitchen)

Me: Skippypants McDidn’tPickaName?

Husband: (looking pleased) Yup.

Me: Should have gone with Potato McTater.

Beta: (exasperated) Mom! You’re not helping!

Me: I cannot help. I can only enable.

Positive Masculinity

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(scene opens in cluttered basement, conversation in progress)

Me: (handing Alpha a towel) Here, use this to clean up that spill.

Husband: (around corner) I see that you’ve fully embraced the RBG Controller lifestyle.

Me: What?

(Husband points to top of cabinet, switch controller charge station holding controllers with morphing rainbow lights along the side)

Alpha: Yeah, my ’tism is in full swing.

Me: You don’t have the ‘Tism, knock it off. But I love those! (said gleefully) Those are pretty!

Husband: (kisses Carrot’s forehead) Of course you do.

Alpha: I mean, sometimes when you’re obliterating heretic scum in the name of the Emperor, you want to feel like a pretty pretty princess.

Me: Right? Totes agree.

Alpha: (deep gravely voice) Brother….. (deep indrawn breath) ….where’s my tiara?

Husband: (sighing) I’m going back to work.

Worth it.

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(scene opens in mini van)

Me: Everyone get your belts on. OH! That reminds me, I found a new playlist for the car.

(picks up phone, begins to fiddle)

Beta: (skeptically) Is it kid friendly?

Me: (smug) Yep.

Beta: A kid friendly list that you like? This can’t be good.

(Carrot begins to drive and a cover of Danzig’s “Mother” begins to play)

Beta: (stunned) What the hell is this? Alpha? Are you seeing this? It’s a playlist in Klingon. We’re listening to Klingon pop music!

Alpha: (unconcerned) You think this is the weirdest thing she’s ever done?

Me: (giggling madly)

Beta: (appalled) You know, just because it’s in Klingon doesn’t mean that it’s kid appropriate.

Me: They’re covers of 80s music. Its unlikely there’s any swears in there.

Beta: Klingons don’t swear?

Me: Oh, I’m sure they do. But I don’t know if there’s a Klingon version of “F you, you F’ing F”. I think they’d just insult your honor or say something like “Your starship is a garbage scow.”

Delta: (righteously) That is very rude.

Me: Yes, that is very rude.

(music cues up cover of “We’re Not Going to Take it“)

Beta: (wearily) Turn this off please.

(Carrot laughs maniacally, fade to black, cut to car commercial)

I’ll show you.

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(scene opens in gloomy dinning room, Carrot at computer)

Gamma: (calls off stage) Mom! Can I come downstairs! I’m bored!

Me: (calls back) Nope. You can keep your Covid self in your room. Its what isolation means. Isolate.

Gamma: But I’m bored!

Me: You spent all of Spring Break locked in your room, why do you want out now?

Gamma: Dad took the tablet!

Me: (unsympathetic) Maybe that was because you won’t stay off the YouTube. Sorry about your luck. Do some art. Play with the felting kit I got you.

(time passes)

(Gamma enters the dinning room, masked)

Me: What are you doing out of your room?

Gamma: (muffled) Here. Can I have the tablet now?

Me: (somewhat impressed) Go ask dad. I don’t know where it is.

Gamma: MOM!

(cue laugh track, fade to black)

That’s our cue.

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(scene opens in cluttered dinning room, children waiting for pie)

Me: (looks up from lap top, calls out) King Charles just knighted Brian May.

Husband: (comes into dinning room with pie)

Beta: Who’s Brian May and why is he important enough to be knighted?

Me: (looks to husband) Want to tell him why Brian May is important?

Husband: Oh. He’s a champion.

Beta: (stares in WTF)

Husband: (prepares the set up) As a young man…

Me: (not seeing where it was going) He killed a man.

Husband: (changes track) Put a gun up to his head.

Me: He pulled the trigger.

Husband: Now he’s….

Beta: (interrupting) Okay! I get it! I get it! Stop already! (crosses arms, sinks into his chair) Geez, you could just tell me.

Husband: Way more fun this way.

Phat Loot

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(scene opens in the car)

Liam: (in a hoarse voice) The best part about being home with strep is that the new Destiny raid drops today!

Me: (pretending interest) Huh.

Liam: Did you know that if you finish the new raid on the first day, you get a WWE style belt?

Me: Won’t match any of your skins.

Liam: No. Mom. You get a real WWE style belt! Tells everyone that you’re a First Day Finisher! Put it in a glass case!

Me: (mildly amused) Huh.

Liam: Don’t lie, mom. If you could have gotten a WWE belt for larping, you totally would have.

Me: I would have hung it up, but I wouldn’t have bothered putting it in a glass case.

Liam: (warming to the subject) You totally would have gone for it. You and your boys? Rolling in? Going after the boss?

Me: (deeply amused) Honey, I was the boss.

Acceptable Paygrade

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(scene opens in driveway)

Delta: (climbing into minivan) Mom! Why is it so cold out?

Me: Winter is coming.

Delta: What comes after winter?

(everyone buckled in, van pulls out and begins to drive)

Me: Spring. That’s when your birthday is, you’re my little Lord of Spring.

Delta: I don’t want to be Lord of Spring!

Me: You don’t? But it sounds so grand. Alpha is the Knight of Winter and Beta is the Knight of Summer.

Delta: And Gamma is Queen of….

Me: Fall. Or Autumn. Queen of Autumn is fancier.

Delta: I like Queen of Fall.

Me: You could be King of Spring if you want.

Delta: (thinks is over) Maybe emperor…? No, I can be the God of Spring. Don’t you think that’s a much more appropriate job title for me?

Me: (grinning stupidly) Yes. I think that’s perfect.

Marital Expectations

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(scene opens in dining room, Carrot wincing as she ices the sole of her foot. Husband enters from kitchen.)

Husband: (expansively) You picked the best weekend to go camping with the Girl Scouts tomorrow!

Me: (wearily) Oh yeah? Heat index out of control?

Husband: No! Its because I have to be up all night!

Me: (suspicious) Why?

Husband: Sandman drops today and I have to binge watch!

Me: (outraged) Not without me!

Husband: I’ll watch it again a dozen times over!

(camera swaps between Carrot’s Murder Face and Husband’s look of Chaotic Glee a half dozen times)

Me: (sighs, checks watch) All the kids are in bed by 8. We’re pulling an all nighter.

Husband: On the big T.V.?

Me: Of course.

Inter-office Memo

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(scene opens at the top of the stairs, furniture pushed onto the landing)

Me: What is this?

Gamma: (briskly exiting her room) I’m just doing a bit of cleaning.

Me: (somewhere between shock and confusion)

Gamma: (hands over a clipboard) I’ve come to some decisions about what I want my room to look like.

(camera cuts to clipboard)

Me: Uh, okay.

Gamma: You probably should talk it over with dad.

Me: Sure. I’ll do that. (slowly backs away, exits scene)

A little called out there.

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(scene opens in cluttered dinning room, merit badge work in progress)

Carrot: (typing around Delta in her lap) Okay, requirement #2b says you have to pick a book of a “best of” list that you think you’d like to read and write it down.

Beta: (unenthused)

Carrot: (after the third list heavy on the “Live, Laugh, Love” bullshit) Wow, its a lot harder than I thought to find something to read.

Beta: Try narrowing it down to just best science-fiction of 2021.

Carrot: Here we go. (starts to scroll, points to the screen) Read that one. Don’t recommend. Oh! I read the first one of this series! (camera cuts to screen, showing Harrow the Ninth)

Beta: (skeptical)

Carrot: Stay with me. It’s got a very Warhammer 40k setting.

Beta: (skeptically interested) …..yeah?

Carrot: And everyone has a different flavor of necromancy.

Beta: (explodes) What is it with you and necromancers!? First its necromancer vampires! Then its necromancer space marines! (waves arms in Muppet flail) Look over there! Necromancer ponies!

Carrot: (loses it completely, laughs copious fat tears into Delta’s moppy blond curls)

Beta: Seriously. What the hell is wrong with you?

Delta (echoing) Yeah mom! What’s wrong with you?

(Carrot laughs until it hurts, fade to black, cut to car commercial)

Literary References

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(scene opens in messy kitchen, Carrot hastily making school lunches)

Gamma: Mom? Can I wear this jacket? (holds up ratty Starfleet letterman)

Me: (pained) I’d rather you not, the sleeves are peeling and I’ve not replaced them with real leather yet.

Gamma: Please?! Look! It almost fits me! (puts it on)

Me: (defeated) Sure, just be very careful with it? I don’t want it to get beyond repair. (goes back to making sandwiches)

Gamma: Mom? What’s Battlestar Galactica?

Me: (taken aback) What? Uh…its another space show. About humanity’s survival against the Cylons. Sentient robots – maybe androids – that rose up and rebelled against their masters.

Gamma: (with deep and excessive sarcasm) Oh. Robots rising up against their masters. Where have I heard that before?

Me: All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Gamma: Wut?

Me: Nothing. It’s a trope. Tropes are reoccurring themes in entertainment and literature. They’re meant to convey certain concepts. Everything is referencing something else. If you understand all the references, you get a much deeper story.

Gamma: (dismissive) You’d think they’d come up with something new by now.

Me: Yeah, well, everything old is eventually made new. Get your boots on, it’s go time.

The importance of literature.

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(scene opens in bitterly cold min-van, conversation in progress)

Gamma: And then my teacher said Slytherin was the best house. When she asked me to hold open the door, I said she had to make Gryffindor just as good as Slytherin. And then I held it open. Gryffindor is the Hero House

Me: (considers that, sighs) Okay. So. As much as I enjoyed the books, the idea that one house is all good and one house is all bad is very simplistic writing. The real world isn’t like that.

Gamma: But Draco is Slytherin and Slytherin is evil.

Me: Draco is not evil and neither is Slytherin. Draco was taught hate and bigotry by his parents, that’s why it persists over generations. Slytherin isn’t evil either. Ambition, while not exactly a virtue, isn’t an evil thing. Its good to be ambitious, to want to be the best at something. To excel.

Gamma: Like Hermoine!

Me: Yes, Hermoine is a very ambitious woman. Where ambition goes wrong is when winning is all that matters and comes at the expense of the safety and well-being of others. Ambition without empathy. As for the Hero House, being brave is all well and good, but sometimes being brave is following the rules. How many times did Harry and crew break the rules?

Gamma: All the time!

Me: And it always worked out for them in the end, which is also nothing like real life. Rules sometimes exist for a reason. The flip side of brave is reckless. Breaking rules just because you think rules don’t apply to you is extremely selfish and somewhat dangerous.

Gamma: Dumbledore gave them extra points when they broke rules so they’d win the house cup.

Me: Which was poor form. It might as well be cheating and abusing a position of authority. Now, as for Hufflepuff, the flip side of Loyalty is giving your loyalty to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

Gamma: Like Crabbe and Goyle! They were very loyal. Why weren’t they in Hufflepuff and not Slytherin?

Me: I don’t know. Maybe their parents were in Slytherin and they wanted to be just like them. Sometimes kids will do whatever their parents say – like Draco – or try to be just like them because they think if they don’t, their parents won’t like them any more. That’s how you perpetuate generational hate. They’re being hateful to other people to win their parent’s love and approval. Anyway, being a loyal friend isn’t supporting them 100% of the time. Sometimes being a loyal friend is standing up to them when they’re about to do something dumb or hurtful or dangerous.

(car pulls into school parking lot)

Gamma: What about Ravenclaw?

Me: The flip side of Intelligence is believing your own hype. You get to the point where you have so much faith in your own smarts, you can’t possibly think that anyone is as smart or smarter than you. So you refuse to listen to experts in their own field. No one is an expert on everything. There will always be an expert that knows more about a subject than you do, and you should listen and learn what they have to teach.

(stops car)

Me: Now. Go to school, learn new things, stay warm, I’ll see you later.

Gamma: Bye! (hops out of car runs off)

Me: (drives the circle to Delta’s building)

Delta: You talk a lot, mom.

Me: Thank you for listening.

Delta: You’re welcome. (hops out of car, runs off)