Hello Ladies and Gents.

I wanted to take the space of my Sunday column here to discuss something I’m truly passionate about:  raising a geeky child!

Both my wife and I are geeks of varying degree.  Alicia loves putting in four hour blocks solving crimes on L.A. Noir.  She can name any Star Trek:  The Next Generation episode within five minutes of turning it on.  Her response to finishing every possible mission in Oblivion was to create a second character so she could try making decisions.  She gets really genuinely excited about the prospect of teaching Othello to high schoolers.  As for myself, I have been known to start thirty minute phone conversations about Doctor Who with random people who come through the telesales line at work.  I regularly refer to “Wal-Mart” as a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”.  I still don’t know the names of half of my coworkers but I can tell you the code names, secret identities, powers, and origins of all of the Avengers (present or original).

We are geeks and while this may be strange to a lot of people, we are proud of that fact.  We’re not the only ones either.  My ex-roommate Taylor showed up at a sneak preview of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” with a towel and a bathrobe.  Jason and his wife Kelly have an ongoing disagreement about whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight.  Charlie has not met a Transformers movie he doesn’t like, Michael Bay or no.  When you give Rich a single line on a white piece of paper and tell him to make anything out of it, you end up with the creature from the movie Alien (possibly wearing a top hat).

We enjoy being smart.  We enjoy sharing in jokes with people at comic conventions who we’ve never met.  We enjoy being able to understand references that other people don’t get, be they references to Shakespeare or Garth Ennis.  It’s a way of life and a happy one at that.  Here’s the thing though, we didn’t get this way by accident.  Our parents are geeks too.  Whether they always meant to or not, they raised us to be this.  Some people’s father’s have to catch the nightly news or the baseball game.  For my dad it was Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.  My mom likes to think she is less geeky, but she can name at least two hundred Pokemon by heart.  Alicia’s dad has freaked out twice at birthday presents I bought him:  one was a three disk dvd of “Enter the Dragon” the other was a hardcover copy of the “Muhammad Ali vs Superman” comic.

Now that Alicia and I have Zuri in our lives, I’ve made it a point let her know I want to raise Zuri as a geek.  We’ve made preparations.  Not only have we investigated the kids channels to see what we like and what is inane, but we’ve purchased several boxed sets of cartoons for her future viewing pleasure.  Lots of parents complain about the drivel their kids like, but we’ve seen to it that our daughter will be familiar with such hits as:  The Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Pinky and the Brain, The X-Men, and Jem.  I want my daughter to understand puns.  I want my daughter to know what a Tardis is.  I want my daughter to understand the practical applications of the Prime Directive and when it may even be okay to violate it.

Cause here’s the thing.  I understand people that want to raise their child within a faith or want to raise their child to be respectful of their elders or want to raise their child to value what they have.  But more important that anything to me is that my child have the ability to imagine.  It seems to me there’re a lot of people these days who look around and can’t see past themselves.  They can’t see beyond the chunk of money that’s taken out of their check each month for taxes.  They can’t see past the narrow ideas of love and history that they were raised on.  They can’t imagine a world in which things could be better for them AND those they consider “other”.  They don’t seem to realize how much we could accomplish if we work together rather than bicker constantly about things that don’t really matter.

I credit my geeky upbringing with my ability to see things and understand people that others find incomprehensible. Jean-Luc Picard taught me that we can accomplish more when we work together.  The Doctor taught me that peaceful solutions are possible for 90% or problems.  Batman and Superman taught me that you have to look out for those fortunate than you.  Spider-man taught me that it’s possible to be smart and strong (you thought you knew where I was going with Spider-Man, didn’t you).

And the Animaniacs taught me there is no such thing as a useless fact.  There is nothing in this universe that is not worth knowing.  That is the knowledge I want to pass on to my daughter more than anything in the world and the advice my parents passed on to me.  There is no good justification for ignorance when the world is so full of wonderful and amazing things.  No matter how stupid men with their little guns fight about the slightest detail, there is a whole wide universe out there begging you to take a ride through it.

While I may not be able to give Zuri a key to the Tardis or equip her first car with an Infinite Improbability Drive, I can read my old issues of X-Men with her and sing her to sleep with They Might Be Giants.  For now, I have to hope that’s enough to create the kind of person I would want to leave my planet in the hands of.