This child is making a huge mistake

At the risk of sounding like a major ass, I sincerely hope that Kid and I eventually come to share a lot of the same interests and likes/dislikes.  This would be much more easily realized if Kid ends up being a boy, because I know Ariane is going to girlify Kid to the maxxxx if Kid is of the fairer sex, and I can start the boy earlier on the finer points of the hilarity of farts.  My favorite things, like I've mentioned previously, are things that probably wouldn't allow me to pull the same kind of chicks as hair gel and orange skin.

  

Outside of football (collegiate, not the ewwy professional kind), I would be lying if I said the bulk of my enjoyment comes from general nerdery.  I'm five years into a Ph.D. program for chemical engineering (Ed. note: kill me) in what is largely considered to be one of America's best cities for twentysomethings, and my favorite thing to do on the weekends is go to a game of some sort, then hit the hay early after a trip to a quiet dinner at a chain restaurant.  I think I have ample preparation for suburbia and 2.3 kids.  Granted, that's just me getting older, but as most will attest, socializing is not one of my frequently enjoyed activities.  If I were/when I was/when Kid becomes a teenager, behavior and mild antisocialism of my type would be/was/will be a social death trap.  I'm going to have to be careful if I try to get Kid to share some of my interests so as not to inflict such a social sentence upon him.  If I do infect him with social leprosy, cries of "You ruined my life!" will still be met with a pause, stare, and me asking Kid if he wants to watch a couple of episodes of Futurama on DVD to patch things up.


Is there a tipping point at which I over dorkify Kid?  Making vinegar volcanoes is cool, but would it be a little bit much to explain to him why the existence of the Death Star is economically infeasible, not to mention complaining about the fact that Han Solo couldn't have performed the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs because (all in unison now) a parsec is a unit of distance, not time.  And then I get frustrated by the bigger-dorks-than-I-am for creating an explanation ex post facto.  I'm pretty sure this would elicit stares, because I do all of my nerdy complaining in public places for the lulz.  We all remember the kids who had for whatever reason gone over the tipping point.  They were social poison, even from my looooooow rung on the ladder.  

If you think back to your days as a kid, I don't think you'd disagree that most kids end up like their parents to a large extent.  I also think the interwebs are going to prove a challenge, because Kid can immerse himself in his passions in a way I never could (and thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for that, because otherwise this would be a blog about the finer merits of the Dragonlance fantasy novel series as an allegory for life and not my accidentally successful in vivo fertilization of a human egg).  On the web, Kid would be cyber-surrounded by dorks who further lead him down the path to dorkdom and it's a vicious cycle that's waaay more desirable than poverty but still kinda sucks nonetheless.  So I am going to toe the line and be as dorktastic as I want, hoping that Ariane can provide enough grace and less nerdy human interaction so that Kid can approach a member of the opposite sex without punching him in the shoulder and making a Wookie sound.  That in mind, Kid's childhood will involve me reading the Lord of the Rings to Kid (boy or girl) at a young age.  Results that I have seen on exposure to LOTR at a young age are a mixed bag to say the least, but those real histories stories are aweso-tastic, and it teaches lessons that you just can't learn anywhere else.  

In the unfortunate event that I do go overboard, at least I can count on the Hypnotoad to brainwash Kid and bring him back to reaALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!