My adventures in geekery began when I was 10 and sat down to watch Star Trek: The Next Generation with my Trekkie mother. To say I was hooked would be an understatement. I lived for new episodes. I wanted to live Star Trek.
But I couldn't actually beam aboard the USS Enterprise so I had to live Star Trek via licensed collectibles. I had a six-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Commander Riker next to my desk, and a space mural on my bedroom wall. I hoarded action figures and trading cards, wrote fan letters to the actors, and fantasized about joining Starfleet Academy.
I loved Star Wars, too, and The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sliders, and a bevy of other sci-fi movies and TV shows that whisked me to realities far, far away from the drudgeries of my suburban, pre-adolescent life.
Part of me loved what I loved. But another part of me — the angst-ridden preteen — needed to project the image that I was exactly the same as everybody else in my peer group. And I shuddered to think what my peers would make of my love for sci-fi. The angst-ridden preteen won out over the geek.
I kept my sci-fi love hidden from the world as I grew into adulthood. I was proud of who I was in so many aspects of my life but when it came to my geeky side, few could know. My shields were up. I thought that was the way it had to be. I didn't want people to hold my geeky passions against me.
But then there was a disturbance in the force. I first noticed it when the biggest non-geek in my life told me how she'd just discovered comic books; within a couple of months, a non-geek acquaintance was raving to me about online gaming and Wil Wheaton's tweets. Superhero movies began ruling at the box office. The Big Bang Theory became a hit with primetime audiences. Increasingly I found myself talking openly about my collection of Star Wars Pez dispensers, or my favourite episodes of TNG, and instead of being shunned, I heard, "That's so cool. Tell me more."
Then I saw myself for the fool I had been for nearly 20 years: a self-hating geek.
I'm still a geek, but now I'm proudly so, because it does say a lot about who I am: that I love to play hard and dream big. And now everyone in my life knows about it.
That's why, when I was pregnant, I opted for a sci-fi/fantasy dance party instead of a traditional baby shower. My costume: Arwen from The Lord of the Rings. Even though most of my non-geek friends mistook me for Spock's mom (an easy mistake to make), I was thrilled that they'd made the effort to embrace my geekiness and come in costume, too.
On April 20 and 21, an estimated 17,000 connoisseurs of geek culture will descend on the Vancouver Convention Centre for Fan Expo Vancouver.
These fans will pose for pictures with the DeLorean from the Back to the Future films and load up on a wide assortment of swag from the worlds of sci-fi, fantasy, anime, manga, video games and comic books. They'll attend panels and rub shoulders with game-changing celebs like Stan Lee, Nichelle Nichols, Amanda Tapping, Sean Astin, David Prowse, Tia Carrere, James Marsters, the cast of Continuum, and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. They'll admire the costumes around them, and take pride in their own.
And I'll be right there with them. When I step into that cavernous convention hall, I know I'll be swept up into a crowd of some of the most passionate people on the planet. They pursue their geeky interests with the frenzied passion of a young child. Energy and passion crackle in the air, and I will joyfully throw mine into the mix.
It's a great time to be a geek. Live long and geek hard.
