While I was in Seattle, I spent a day hanging out with my brother, @nathanisthebest, his friend Kate, and Mike (@elbowsandknees). We went to the comic shop and I was looking at a rack of Wonder Woman trades and whatnot.
As I’m reviewing the materials, a person of a certain stereotypical comic book nerd persuasion stands next to me to look at the same rack. Or, as it turns out, my rack. He asks, “So, who’s your favorite superhero?”
As I am standing in front of the Wonder Woman display, holding an armload of Wonder Woman comics, I mumble, “Uh, Wonder Woman?” and figure that will be the end of it or he will ask me what I think of something specific about Wonder Woman, since that’s how these nerdy conversations usually go.
But then he says, “You usually don’t see girls in comic book shops, so I had to ask.”
I took a breath and replied, “You usually don’t see women my age being referred to as girls,” turned on my heel and walked away. I didn’t see his reaction. He’s lucky I was in a good mood, I guess.
Later on, as we were driving Mike back to the Lynnwood Park & Ride, I began to feel some regret about my brutal shutdown of the nerd and mentioned it to the car – which then exploded into laughter and full-on judgement of his poor-social skills and, apparently, bad personal grooming. I really didn’t get a good look at him, but I’ll take their word for it.
