What I mean by “geek”

Typically a geek is portrayed in popular media by a socially challenged introverted still living with his mother bespectacled late twenties man.  This man may or may not be a computer programmer or more typically a hacker of some sort or someone addicted to multiplayer online games.  That is not my definition of a geek.

A geek, to my way of thinking, is simply someone, male or female, who likes toys.  I don’t mean Barbies or RC cars necessarily, I mean “toys” like electronics or DIY jewelry or making your own paper and journals, you know:  toys.  Toys are things we play with so we can escape reality for a while. Geeks are interested in astronomy and history and re-enacting old battles and fixing up old things and collecting stamps.  Being a geek means we trade in our mundane everyday existence for another life outside our own reality.  You can be a religion geek or a yoga geek or a book geek or a Science Fiction geek or a Comic Book geek.  We each define the kind of geekdom to which we aspire.

It is my love of knowledge that has make me a geek.  I want to know how to do “things”:  make a book safe, tie a paracord bracelet, make my own paper, repair an old book that’s falling apart, re-learn how to write cursive in a manner that is legible.  Those are the kind of things that make a geek.

Don’t get me wrong, some would consider me a computer geek.  I own a Kindle and an iPhone and an Android tablet, but I try to not be defined by my electronics.  I love books.  I love the smell of ink and paper and the unique perfume of an old book.  I like the way the words feel as you read them on paper.  I also love my Kindle.  I like that I can take all of my e-books with me wherever I go all in the space of one very thin paperback.  I love to immerse myself in the world of Richard Sharpe in early 19th Century Europe or fight off Zombies in the near future or explore strange worlds in the not so near future with R. Daneel Olivaw or even spend a few crazy hours on Discworld with Sam Vimes and the Night Watch.  

I do wear glasses, I do work in IT, I am an introvert but I can get by in social settings, I do not live with my mother, I am not in my twenties (although I once was), I am not a hacker, I don’t play video games, I do solve a Sudoku and a crossword most every day (online of course).  I, like most people in the world, feel invisible most of the time–unnoticed and unacknowledged and unappreciated.  It is my (our) geekiness that makes us feel a part of something bigger or more permanent.  When I am tying a hemp bracelet, I am with others who do the same thing.  When I read a Terry Pratchett book, I am laughing along with thousands of others who enjoy his brilliantly skewed vision of the universe.  When I ride my motorcycle, I am King of the Road (maybe a Duke or an Earl), not just plain me.

And when I write, while i peck away for a few minutes, I am changing the world.