If you know me, you know that I'm a self-proclaimed geek. I've always thought that people who were self-proclaimed-whatevers were really phony to begin with (anyone who describes themselves as the 'laid back' or 'sensitive' types turn out to be real assholes in the end in my experience), but I never denied the fact that I have no shortage of geeky interests. I even say this is in a world where the term 'nerd' and geek' are being thrown around too easily, thus saturating the term and skewing people's perceptions on what these types of people actually are like. Case in point:
That all aside, today I found myself in a situation where I realized that I believe I may have grossly misunderestimated how geeky I actually am. I realized that today when I went to "Magiquest" with a meetup group. I guess the easiest way to describe this is by saying that it's a sort of real-life interactive video game in which the participants actually walk around a pre-fabricated magical kingdom with real plastic wands that they use to to open chests and swing around wildly at screens showcasing some low-budget medieval-ish productions with bad actors playing fairies, wizards, and singing princesses. Observe:and
A few minutes into this, I realized that what I was doing was completely ridiculous. I mean, it's all fun and good when you're 8, but I happened to be hanging out with 30-somethings here. I had to feel a bit out of place when I had 3rd graders darting in and out of my way.
Now, I don't mean to sound like I'm criticizing these people or anything. They all happened to be really friendly people who I got along with fairly well throughout the day. I think I may have just realized that there's a certain limit as to which I can exude my inner nerd. I'll quote The Simpsons in everything I do, I'll pick up any Final Fantasy and invest 40+ hours playing it whenever I can, but I just don't think I can bring myself to actually spend my afternoons wandering around a shopping mall arcade waving a magic wand at a plastic statue of armor and take myself seriously anymore.Does this mean I've grown old and boring? A part of me fears that this may be the case.
On the bright side, I can pretend the initials of the place stand for "Mark with a Q"
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