Wil Wheaton Made Me Cry at Work

WHEEAAATTTOOONNNNN!

Darn it Wil Wheaton. You made me get weepy at work.

My favorite author is Douglas Adams. He's dead now and can't write anymore. That makes me sad. I got to meet him about a year before he died. It was really cool. I got to tell him what he did for me. Here's what he did ...

Growing up I never felt like I fit in. I was always the Rhoda, never the Mary. Always the Cousin Oliver. I felt like I was always the geeky or dorky one growing up. I liked things that nobody else liked. I watched things on TV that my classmates hated. I listened to music nobody else liked. I had a strange way at looking at things. My teachers looked at me funny and treated me differently (except for one).  I never really understood what was wrong with me. Then gradually, as I got older I got comfortable with my weird. I even met people who shared my weird, or at least had a weird of their own that co-existed nicely with mine. I even got to marry one of these weird people and make babies with him.

It all started with Taco Bell.

My very first job was at Taco Bell. I was working one night with a cute boy from my high school. He was the super tall and lanky heavy metal guy who could scat. I had a major crush on him. He told me about this book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The next day I went to the library and checked it out. I started reading it and didn't put it down until I finished it.
I got two things out of the book;
one - I loved the book. It was a fun story with great characters and lots of really great lines to remember and sometimes incorporate into my everyday speech,
two - (and this is the important part) it taught me that it's OK to be weird. It's OK to be comfortable with the things I like, the things I like to do and the people I like to be with.

Today I saw this clip of Wil Wheaton.

In this video, Wil Wheaton did for tons of struggling nerds/geeks/dorks/misfits, etc., what Douglas Adams did for me. It made me weepy. It made me happy. Thanks Wil.

Thanks Wil. You're a good guy to have in every geek's corner. By the way, we've met before. It was December 1990. You were on a plane from London to LAX. I walked by you as I was boarding. I was staring. You said "Hello." I freaked out and walked away. Sorry.