There is a particular Geekdad joy in raising my boys to appreciate the things I appreciate, especially when it comes to genre movies, television, and literature. It’s not all lembas and pan galactic gargleblasters, mind you. For every success (having my older boy in the field at his little league game taunt the opposing player at the plate not with "hey batter batter," but with "exterminate," delivered over and over again in a Dalek’s voice), there is a failure (I can’t for the life of me get either boy to sit and watch the original Star Trek series with me – even with the remastered effects).
What I’ve noticed most profoundly is the language I’m passing down to them. As a genre geek, I tend to pepper my speech with numerous quotes from my favorite media, and I’ve noticed my sons repeating them and incorporating them into their speech as well. Some examples include:
"That’s no [insert surprisingly large item], that’s a space station!" (hat tip to my buddy Randall who started using this phrase decades ago, in reference to the burritos we’d feast on from The Burrito Shop).
"Game over, man! Game over!" Perhaps Bill Paxton’s finest moment.
"Further up, further in!" This one’s a little bit more obscure, but may see screen time after the preceding five books are adapted to film.
And, of course, any of a thousand variations on "run a bypass," "reverse the polarity," and "she canna take much more, Captain!"
So I’d like to throw the topic open to the other GeekDads: how is your geekspeak influencing your kids’ speech? Are we creating a generation that will use the phrases we quote as a sort of insider geek-jargon, as simple idiom instead?
