Geek Spotting

Yesterday I had quite a shock in the parking lot of the apartment building I've been living at for the last two years. As I was parking the car, I saw an unmistakable geek walking toward and then into the main door for my apartment floor (there are several buildings in the complex, and each floor of each building has it's own main door).

I was thoroughly shocked, since as I mentioned previously, I have been living there for a few years and had no idea. You may be wondering how I knew this person was a geek. Simple, said person matched practically every geek criteria, including:

• male (between 20-25)
  
• slightly overweight
• wore a slightly worn out t-shirt (that was not very flattering)
  
• pale skin
  
• glasses
• and long, stringy, unkempt hair

At first I wondered if he lived on my floor, but a second look helped me determine that he was probably just visiting. He had what looked like some notebooks, along with some other unidentifiable supplies. The clincher was that he carried a 12-pack of orange soda and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. Clearly he was a visiting gamer-geek and courteous enough to bring supplies.

But what game? He didn't have a laptop, so I doubt it was a LAN party. I didn't see boxes of miniatures, so he wasn't a wargammer (those dudes NEVER travel light), thanks to online play, there's no point to physically get together for any console gaming. He may have been an RPG gamer (D&D and the like) or a CCG gamer, I can't be sure...

Before anyone thinks that I'm making fun of/looking down on the guy I saw, let me say with full disclosure, earlier that day, during running my errands, I also made a stop at the local comic book/hobby store, and later that night I played some Guitar Hero (Rockin' the 80's) and had my own best-of season 5 Buffy the Vampire Slayer mini-marathon thanks to the complete Buffy DVD collection I own.

So to that geek I saw in the parking lot, I say: I hope you had a good time... and do you have room for another player? :-)