Well, the good news is that I have gone long enough between migraines that I’ve been able to start using my kettlebells again.  Which is nice, but geez I’m sore.

I continue to monitor the whole Gaming #MeToo situation, and while there are some heartening developments, the sheer number of stories coming out is more than a little disheartening.

Memo: Geek Dudes who have spent the last 40 years patting yourselves on the back for not being like those dickhead jocks?  Guess what?  I have some bad news for you.

GenCon has come out and said that they have banned Zak S.  So that’s good.  There’s still a lot of in-fighting about what Green Ronin did or didn’t do or know.

Anyway, the other day @KEBrightbill tweeted about describing the most on-brand story you can remember from your childhood.  And there were some spectacular stories of baby feminists and baby geeks coming out in response to that.

I apparently fucked it up by replying to someone who had changed it to “on brand story about your sun sign.”  Bleah.  But I thought I’d post them here because I need some fucking levity, you guys.

So, the first story is my Tiny Feminist Filled with Rage story:  My mom agreed to babysit a kindergarten classmate of mine, who was coincidentally my “first kiss,” or one of them. It was either him or the other boy I hung out with a lot.  His mom had jury duty, so she dropped him off at my house, and he came in, looked at my toy box and asked my mom, “Whose trucks are these?”

Mom:  “Those are GGR’s trucks.”

Him:  “Nuh uh, GIRLS don’t play with trucks.”

Me:  “THOSE ARE TOO MY TRUCKS!!!”

Apparently I drew myself up to my full three and a half feet of height, tiny fists balled at my sides and growled it through clenched teeth.

So, really, nothing but the height has changed.  I still get pissed off by boys trying to tell me I can’t play with my toys.

The other story is, ok, so you wouldn’t necessarily know it to have looked at me, but I was a weird ass child.  I had long Carmel colored hair, and big, like anime big, eyes.  I’ll find a picture.

But behind the Precious Moments figurine exterior… My folks had some odd ideas of age appropriate. I believe I mentioned the short story anthology that included Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls,” and Bradbury’s “The Veldt” when I was like 7.  Like a lot of adults in the 70s, I think there was a lot of, “Oh, well, if they show it on regular TV it can’t be that bad.”

Yeah…

So, by the age of five, I was already an avid fan of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone.  Both shows were in syndication, and played one after the other.  I fucking LOVED those shows as a child.  Honestly, I still kind of do.

After a particularly disappointing Alfred Hitchcock Presents, I think it was the one where the guy gets gored by the bull, but I don’t remember the rest of it. Anyway, five year old me did not approve of whatever happened in that episode.  So the next day my best friend Brent who was also a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, at the worldly age of six, and who was also disappointed by the previous night’s show, he and I decided that we would name an ant Alfred Hitchcock and bury it alive in effigy.

Honestly, we might have known the phrase “in effigy,” we were pretty precocious kids.  Or not, but it doesn’t matter.

So we caught an ant, dug a deep hole and buried it.  We knelt there feeling smug and triumphant for a moment…

…and then the guilt hit.  So now we have two small sobbing children desperately trying to dig an ant out of a hole.

The ant was probably fine, honestly.  If we didn’t crush it with our rescue efforts.

Yeah, totally on brand.  Granted, I think I’m better about not trying to bury people alive, in effigy or not, but not about futile heroics while crying.

Yeah, these stories illuminate so much, don’t they?

Seriously, small children are hella morbid.

Well, ok, I was.

Whatever. I’m perfectly functional now.

Don’t judge me.

If you like what you read here, or want to help fund therapy, so much therapy you guys, please consider donating using the link at the top right of the page:  Keep Us Geeking, or checking out my Patreon.  Thank you!

Also, if you’d like to see what sort of fiction I write when left to my own devices, please feel free to check out my fiction Patreon, Nothing Nice Comes Out of My Head.