I sent my husband a link to a post on the GeekDad blog called “10 Annoying Habits of a Geeky Spouse” with the note “Do any of these sound familiar?”

His response: “I don’t think I get it. Which ones are the annoying ones?”

That was my reaction too. For the most part, the article pretty much described everyday life at our house. One of the wonderful things that Tall Paul and I have in common is that both of us are married to geeky spouses, and we’re not at all unhappy with the way that’s worked out.

If you have a geeky spouse – or you are the geeky spouse – tell me which of these ring a bell with you:

1. Punning. As I’ve mentioned here more than once, Tall Paul and I met through an online-dating site and exchanged quite a few e-mails before we met in person for our first date. (The fourth anniversary of that date is coming up ten days from now, on April 17.) In one of those early e-mails, I warned him that I had a serious weakness for puns and wordplay. When he replied, he warned me that he had the same affliction. We have been inflicting our shared affliction on each other – and anyone else unfortunate enough to enter our orbit – for almost four years now, and I look forward to many more years of punny business.

2. Using “frak,” or Klingon, or both, instead of regular swear words. He says “fark” or “fargin’.” I say “frick.” As the original post notes, these are useful substitutes in front of the kids. However, I should note that neither of us speaks Klingon, which is definitely a ding on our nerd-cred scores.

3. Weird or over-the-top ways of celebrating mainstream holidays. Festivus is not a “mainstream” holiday, so that doesn’t count. I don’t think we do this all that much, other than the ritual viewing of A Christmas Story.

Now, these people know how to go over-the-top with their holiday festivities:

4. Dissecting movies. Wait, this is a geek thing? I thought everyone did this – does that mean everyone I know is a geek? (Rhetorical question, I know.) If the movie doesn’t rate dissection after viewing, was it even worth seeing in the first place? But having said that, I am a bit apprehensive about seeing the new Star Trek movie with Tall Paul, because that one’s going to get carved up and re-assembled no matter how good it is…

5. Wearing obscurely geeky T-shirts to “normal” places. That’s him more than me, mainly because I don’t wear printed T-shirts all that often, but even his aren’t all that obscure. His “Human Guinea Pig” Mythbusters T-shirt is pretty cool, though.

6. Requiring extra room in the house for geeky things. If books count as “geeky things,” that’s my contribution right there. Tall Paul dreams of a media room to showcase his movie memorabilia.

 7. Geeky toys and decorations can be hard to explain to kids. They’re actually explained pretty easily: “Dad’s weird.” Luckily, our kids are old enough that it’s not so much of a problem.

8. Looking up information while a discussion/argument is still in progress. We were recently at a birthday party, playing a game that involved answering questions about the guest of honor, my nine-year-old nephew. One of the questions asked us to name his favorite hockey player. Tall Paul brought out his iPhone to look up the LA Kings roster and results of the latest game. Both of us have been known to hop online during a conversation to check on something, but that web-browsing iPhone of his adds a whole new dimension to it.

9. Needing to watch certain TV shows ASAP to avoid spoilers. Spoilers don’t bother me; I still like to see how the story plays out. Tall Paul, on the other hand, forbids discussion of Lost in his presence on Thursday mornings. Then again, I think that as more people create their own TV-viewing schedules with DVRs and computers, this will either become less of an issue or so impossible to avoid that people will stop caring.

10. Geeky projects that take over the house and whole weekends. Not owning a house means that your weekends aren’t devoted to maintenance and yard work, which means more time and space for those geeky projects. Most of ours involve computer stuff, so they don’t take up a lot of room, but then there are those old photo slides that have been in the process of being organized for scanning since early last year, and which stole the dining-room table this weekend.

“Mommy’s all right,
Daddy’s all right,
They just seem a little weird…”

The world is SO lucky that we will not be procreating (with each other).

Here’s the thing, though: although this article was about “geeky” habits, according to The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test, I’m not so much of a geek – I’m a nerd.

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

Take The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test at HelloQuizzy

Nerds at work on the bridge of the Enterprise NC-1701-D, January 2008