Dating and the Single Girl...Nerd

From the pen of girl nerd Ms. C. comes this new series, a painfully honest account of one single girl nerd meant to edify, inform, inspire, and remind you that you're not alone in this.

I've belonged to Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, and now the newly-discovered Virb (sold to me by my sister-in-law as, "A place so new, there's no ex-boyfriends there!")

But the problem I've found with those sites is that I simply don't use them the way they're intended. My eyes burn when I see moving sparkles and my parents aren't really that mean, nor am I interested in your new band. Hey! I'm sure they're AWESOME! And most of the guys on there...well, there's no way to know who they REALLY are, if they're even guys...or 18.

I prefer to meet guys the old-fashioned ways: at a party, through a mutual friend, or, ideally, through arranged marriage. What that means is that romance will happen as it happens. I must be patient.

In fact, I'm always telling myself, "Patience." Or actually, to be honest, I'm always telling myself, "Patience, young jedi" and it's in Yoda's voice. This is how I know I am a full-fledged, card-carrying, grade A girl nerd: Yoda is giving me dating advice.

I was recently "outed" as a girl nerd by a friend who opened my eyes to what I'd denied for years. Sure, I liked Star Wars and pretty much any movie with robots or outer space, but I didn't feel I had much of a choice: I grew up in the 80's. Sure, I owned more books than blouses...and slacks...and shoes...combined, but I was hip! I had a job and apartment in the heart of The City, I biked, I camped and hiked, I listened to Radiohead...oh. Right. There was no denying it.

So now I choose to embrace it. I choose to wrap my shapely arms around the concept that it's OK to like BSG and to call it BSG. It's OK to go to bed at 9 p.m. on a weeknight, and to read a chapter of The Chamber of Secrets before completing two crossword puzzles while the cats race each other up and down the hall. It's OK to do all this after an evening where I dined on reheated beans and rice out of a tupperware bowl, washed that down with a light beer, left hand flipping the pages of Rolling Stone, right hand clicking links on my laptop in between bites, and reading text messages from a friend telling me to stop everything I'm doing and GO SEE 300 OH MY GAWED IT'S SO WOW.

I'm a nerd. I'm a girl. I'm single. And it's OK.