Monday, July 23, 2007

Friday night we attended a party at Borders for the release of the seventh and final Harry Potter book. I feel it is important that we do as many geeky things as possible as a family.

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You can see several important things in this picture. First, for the sake of clarification, both cups of coffee are mine. The bookstore offered pumpkin juice, butter beer, troll bogey slush, pomegranate polyjuice potion and a number of other things in addition to flavored and unflavored coffee. I realized I'm not much of an "either/or" kind of guy, so I had a cup of every kind of coffee except for decaf. Both at once.
The second thing (and the point of this post) is that Gwynyth is wearing her Gryffindor robe and brandishing a wand, yet she still manages to confidently exude a sense of "cool". I'm working on that, though.
Attending a midnight premiere of something geeky is a vital part of her geeky upbringing. As you can tell from the picture though, even wearing a costume she appears able to have a conversation with another non-online human.
It seems we have a lot of work to do.
I've been giving it a great deal of thought. Were something to happen to me, who would take over? The title would naturally fall to her, but her reign would be short indeed if anyone should sense a weakness in the Geek Fu. It is a merciless game we play who duel in trivia.
At the age of 4, she was correcting "adults" in comic book shops regarding the proper shade of a lightsaber blade based on the character pictured holding it. This was one of my proudest moments as a parent.
A power vacuum at the pinnacle of geekdom would mean, quite simply, war between the lesser princes.
Before she returns to school this fall, I've asked her to memorize the dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back. I know she has an official "Summer Reading List", but time is limited and choices need to be made.
After that, we will be going over the history of the X-Men in excruciating detail. She likes Storm and Kitty Pryde well-enough, but her lack of enthusiasm for the B-List leaves a lot of room to forget their various astrological signs, political leanings and shoe sizes. An error in any of those would be devastating.
At least it would be before she has a chance to solidify her power base.

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