Help Me! I'm One of Them

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but I married a geek. Cute, but a geek. Seriously, our office is decorated with unopened X-Men action figures. (Not dolls - ACTION FIGURES.) We have a life-size Spiderman standee, several Marvel-themed games and a stack of boxes filled with comic books, some in different languages. I find this quirky and adorable.

Anyway... My geek and I have spent the last couple of years rolling our eyes at the nerds who are obsessed with Lost. We didn't watch it from the beginning - I can honestly say I have never seen an episode of Lost or Survivor - so we don't understand the references and honestly couldn't care less.

It's important to understand that I am much more judgemental than my geek. I have looked at the Lost-ites with sadness. What is wrong with their lives that they feel the need to latch onto this show? Can they not use some of this energy to read a book? take up a hobby? learn some trade? Then I find out I have Lost-ites in the family. Even the Duchess, someone whose intelligence and sociability I greatly admire, is a Lost-ite.

So, I have been judging you all. How pathetic you are to be so obsessed with a tv show.

Then came Monday night and Heroes. I started with this show for 2 reasons: first, my geek has gotten me marginally interested in comic books (all right, it's more the off-chance that someone as hot as Hugh Jackman will appear in any super-hero representation); and second, it leads into my Sorkin-fix, Studio 60. But then it happened. I got hooked.

I have become one of them. I have been 3 days without any new information on the Heroes front and I actually miss it. I met a local celebrity yesterday and engaged him in conversation about Heroes. I am boring my co-workers with laborious expalanations and theories about the show. I am actually praying for the weekend to be over so I can see what will happen next.

How did this happen?! I used to read. I used to watch Monday Night Football. I was cool in high school - this is not me!

I have decided to embrace the geek in me. I will now fully immerse myself in the Heroes world. I'm thinking about ordering the graphic novel. Maybe I'll join a chat room. Wait, that may be going a bit too far. But I can tell you this: if you call my home between the hours of 8 and 10 on a Monday night, no one will answer. And when I call you back, you will be forced to listen to a scene-by-scene replay of what happened. Which you won't enjoy because as the local celebrity and I painstakingly discussed: we're in the character-building process, which is the biggest, longest and most important part of the story arc.