She looked at me. "Train for what?"
"Oh, um." I said, "you know, just to get better."
"Because?"
"Because I haven't gotten past the first screen in 20 years."
I have this Space Invaders T-shirt that I wear from time to time.
I don't wear it as often as I'd like, because it's filled with errors, like the score is all wrong for the number of invaders that have been shot, the shots in progress are all wrong, and ... well, look, it's just nerd shit, I guess. It's still a cool shirt, and normal people can't see anything obviously wrong with it.
I had it on yesterday, when Anne and I went to the grocery store to pick stuff up for dinner, and the girl at the register commented on how much she loved to play the game when she was a kid.
Anne, Nolan, and Ryan have all told me that I should just keep my geek to myself in certain situations, but sometimes (read: all the time) I can't help myself. This was one of those times.
"Oh, yeah, I love this game," I said. "And I saw this T-shirt at Threadless.com earlier today that - " this is when she totally glazed over and got really interested in scanning our items.
"She's tuned you out! Shut up!" My brain screamed at me. Anne, polite to a fault, gently squeezed my arm.
I ignored them both. "It was so cool. It was one of these little guys," I pointed to one of the invaders on my shirt, "standing in front of several rows of these other little guys," I pointed to other invaders on my shirt as Anne tightened her grip, "and it was like he was a general, showing them the battle plan, which was a little dotted line going in this kind of 'move to the side and then drop down' direction!"
She and Anne shared a look. I couldn't tell who was more sympathetic to the other, but the message passed was clear: I am so sorry.
She totaled up our order, Anne paid her, and we walked out of the store. As the door closed behind us, I think I heard a loudspeaker say, "Clean up on register 5 ... someone got Geek all over the place."
For the record, here's the shirt I was describing, which you can purchase from Threadless:
I know, right? Awesome.
