I shared a bedroom with my parents until I was seven. As most of my mother’s things were at her parents’ house, the bedroom stayed decorated in my father’s 80s teenage nerd style. I went to bed with Brandon Lee as The Crow watching over me and woke up to posters of powerful Marvel heroines like Rogue and She-Hulk. My days were spent sitting in my Uncle Jamie’s room, watching him play video games until my father would come in and make him give me a turn. When his legs grew too long, I inherited his Batmobile. Once a week, I cuddled my grandfather in his recliner and held a giant silver bowl of popcorn while we watched Star Trek and Babylon Five.

I played Tetris on a grey brick far too large for my hands and pointed excitedly at the television every time the commercial came on of a grungy assembly line turning giant grey bricks into candy colored wonders and sliding them into the back pockets of jeans. Years later, when my parents could afford to buy a Game Boy Color with a see-through purple body for my birthday, I fell in love with the world of Pokémon. My father took me to the midnight release of Sony’s PlayStation 2 and we stayed up until two in the morning playing Tekkin Tag Tournament. I was nine and did not make it to school the next day.

I held my first human heart when I was eight years old. My mother decided to wait in the hall while my father introduced me to Mary, his cadaver for the first semester of podiatry school. Not soon after meeting Mary, I was given the gift of a microscope that might have had “do not remove from lab” stamped on the case.

I read fast because I grew up on subtitled anime. Subs or Dubs? It depends if I’m painting my nails. My budget for Steam sales is almost always broken. Don’t ask me to choose a favorite game without specifying the genre. Don’t give me a toy styracosaurus and call it a triceratops. Picard on the streets, Kirk in the sheets. What book am I reading? Again, specify genre because there’s at least five. My nerdom and geekiness are as well-rounded as my hips, so why don’t you stay awhile and listen?

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