My life as a geek is a simple one. When there is a show or movie that I am interested in, I watch it. My life as a geek father is much more complicated. In all honesty, I do make it a bit more difficult by being fairly strict about the things I allow my children to watch. Then there are my personal geek preferences: Star Trek over Star Wars, DC over Marvel, Green Lantern over…everyone. As my son gets older, I am realizing that this is going to be more difficult than I thought it would be? How do I raise a young geek to have his own interests and not just imitating me? How do I expose him to all the wonders of the geekdom while keeping in mind age appropriateness? How do I keep him from ever being interested in things like Twilight!?
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Dawn of a Geek
When I was growing up, my dad and I didn’t spend a lot of time together watching TV. We had different interests. I like Ninja Turtles and G.I. Joe; he liked Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson. We were in different worlds with different viewing preferences. Then one day, I saw him watching some show with guys in different color shirts carrying laser pistols. I was amazed that my dad would be watching something so cool. Even better, he let me watch it with him! We watched Kirk and Spock battle a strange looking orange blob thing in some caves and it was awesome! After the episode my dad explained a bit about the show and I was hooked from that day on. You trekkies out there already know which episode my dad and I watched but for those who don’t, it was Episode 25 of Season 1 “The Devil in the Dark”.