The Nerdiest Thing You Ever Did in Public: And the Winners Are…

?I guess it’s been a while since I ran a “nerd experiences” contest as opposed to a “make shit up” contest, because you guys were ready to write — and when I say “ready to write” I mean you guys “obliterated my requested word count limit.” I can’t get too mad, though, because your tales of public nerdery were hilarious, shameful, and even sometimes inspiring — it made for some good reading, if some difficult judging. So be warned, even though there’s the usual percentage of HMs — about 10%, in this case close to 40 — you have a hell of a lot of reading ahead of you, because many of these entries are epic tales of nerdery.

Of course, infinite thanks to Arcane Movie Tees for sponsoring this week’s contest! Please, if you didn’t win, show ’em some love by checking out their great selection of nerdy movie t-shirts. But after you’re done reading the HMs and winners, of course.

The Honorable Mentions are as follows:

Arsenal:

I wish I knew this guys name so we could co-op this one.
I was in Target buying something and at the check out lane. I was wearing the only Highlander T-shirt I have ever seen, Black shirt with a red collar that looked like a cut with the text saying “There can be only one”. The guy at the register does a double take at my shirt and then starts explaining his Slash-Fic about Buffy and The Highlander. The detail of this story is insane, and I just politely listen to the entire thing until he gets to the end where they both go their separate ways and Buffy ends up being pregnant by Duncan McLeod.

At this point I stop him and just start to explain how stupid the entire thing was, that to begin with an Immortal would not be able to really fight vampires that well and while Duncan was know to “hook up” he can not get anyone pregnant and that the entire story is just ridiculous because of that one fact.

The problem was people noticed the conversation where by the end I had destroyed this nerds slash fic, to his face in public, but giving evidence like a court room drama, on how an Immortal can not have children no matter what even if magic is involved or an old god or anything. I in public and with out thinking out nerded a Slash Fic author.

Ryan Marsh:

I got pulled over by the cops for speeding and when they asked me if I had any outstanding warrant out for my arrest I said “Only my character does, but I suppose LARP does not count”

Mythbri:

Ohhhh Shameful Acts of Nerdery – are they worth committing in order to exploit them for a contest?
Yes. Yes they are.

Now, this happened in college, on campus – but not in a classroom, so I didn’t even think of it for the “Nerdiest Thing at School” contest. My friend and I were killing time between classes out on the quad, so there were plenty of previously-unknown people chilling on the grass and minding their own business. And then all of a sudden, my friend starts singing the “My Little Buttercup” song from the movie “Three Amigos.” My friend and I have varying tastes in movies – she likes soppy rom coms and such, and I much prefer films that are cool and interesting. But in some cases, our tastes overlap – and our shared love for “Three Amigos” is one of them.

So as she starts singing the song, I start to join in. But that isn’t enough. She gets to her feet and starts doing the dance. And I can’t let her do it alone – one, because what kind of a friend would I be to let her embarrass herself alone like that? And two, because it takes two people to do justice to the dance. Thus it happened that she and I danced the “My Little Buttercup” dance, including the parts where we slapped our thighs and banged our feet together behind us, and the parts where we turned and wiggled our butts, and the part where I jumped into her arms.

By the time we’d finished, there was a small crowd of people gathered around, some of whom burst into applause as soon as we were done. It was shameful and embarrassing, and made quite an impression on the student body – for a week or two afterword, it wasn’t uncommon for people to point and say “Buttercup!” when they happened to see us together. I have only two regrets:
1. Doing it in the first place.
2. That we weren’t in full “Three Amigos” costume when we did it, because that would have been awesome.

SovereignNerd:

At the tail end of the Captain America movie, when Nick Fury shows up in Times Square, I waved. At Nick Fury. On the movie screen. And said, “There’s Nick Fury. Hi, Nick Fury!”

Heenz:

In the fourth grade, my friends and I spent every moment at school pretending to be various fictional characters. Our time was spent recreating Dragon Ball Z, Harry Potter, Pokemon, and Jurassic Park in their entirety, at least once a day.
This was not merely kid play. We were serious as fuck about it, and would shush people who tried to interrupt.

The last time I saw these people, we were at the premiere of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We greeted each other across a crowded theater by screaming various lines from Dragon Ball Z, before finally meeting in the middle for an epic battle, which ended in a nose bleed and many, many stern looks from the staff.

I was Goku. I’m a 5′ 4″ brunette woman. Good times, man. Good times.

Brando Lars:

I went to see L.o.t.r. Two towers in full Gandalf robe with staff. Rode the bus and subway to get there only to have the pimply faced ticket taker at the theater to refuse my entry because my Staff was considered to be a weapon. So I turned to him and said “What are you saying? ARE YOU SAYING I SHALL NOT PASS?” screaming at the end. I demanded to see the manager and I got into the movie with my staff.

Chicag0_Ted:

I got kicked out of LOTR Return of the King, for very loudly saying Mr. Anderson at the end of every line Hugo Weaving said.
Every Line was finished like that, and apparently it took until the very end for people to get annoyed with me. I wish I had some witty retort when I was getting lead out of the theater, but what can you do.

Best Part? I can’t stand the Matrix, and I didn’t do that during Captain America so I think I made a step forward as a person.

Gaspump:

I hope that collaboration acts of extreme nerdery count, because I think I’ve got one that’ll fit the bill. You see, one particularly boring evening last summer, my four nerdy friends and I decided that we should go on a journey to prove ourselves to be true ninja masters. And by this, I mean we drove around to all the major hang out spots and challenged everyone we saw to “ninja” that one game where you have to hit each other’s hands and stuff. Our biggest hit was out by our town’s lake, where we stumbled across a group of our less nerdy peers partying. With a sufficient quantity of alcohol in them, we were able to coax them into playing the BIGGEST game of Ninja I’ve ever seen. There had to have been 40 people at the start of the first round, and by the end, It was between myself, a friend and one INCREDIBLY ninja savvy drunk guy. my buddy went out first, and in a nerve wracking battle that went on for minutes, I was finally defeated by the party goer. As I pantomimed committing seppuku in the sand of the lake beach, the drunk guy yelled out to all the party goers and my friends: “THAT… IS REAL ULTIMATE POWER!” I about cried it was so beautiful.

Agent0range:

So, Homestuck: if you’ve never heard of it it’s a webcomic. I think doing things related to it counts as nerdery. It began on April 13 two years ago; in-story, the main character’s birthday is also April 13.

This year me and two friends decided to celebrate his birthday. We went to a little cupcake shop and each got something. As soon as we exited we sang Happy Birthday as loud as we could on a crowded street. It took a while for us to find somewhere to sit and eat– we ended up doing so on a park bench. One of us got the bright idea to wish everyone who passed by a happy April 13 with no further context unless asked. Most everyone gave us odd looks. It was pretty awesome, in a small way.

Oh, I guess I should mention it was only about 38 degrees outside. We wished people a happy 4/13 for about twenty minutes. Just in case we get extra for suffering for nerdery.

zlgames:

A couple years ago I went to a graduation party for a friend. The party was outside the house, where there was a HUGE bonfire. There were a couple people standing around the bonfire…just looking into it, not talking…or smiling or anything. I went over to join them, and stared at for a few minutes. All the sudden I shouted with excitement, “Master Splinter! He’s alive! MASTER SPLINTER IS ALIVE!”

The group all turned to me, with confused looks on their faces, ‘Seriously? None of you have seen the Turtles movie?’ They just continued staring at me. ‘Lame.’ I walked off, and told another group of people about my nerd fail.

Duhyeager:

Nerdiest thing and a moment I am least proud of, was involving Street Fighter vs Marvel at the local Mall’s arcade. I am a HUGE Street Fighter nerd, and I realize I am not the best buy I feel I have a level of ability that I should be able to beat some people. I was at the Mall with a female friend, and I was playing the game when i kid..probably 12 maybe a little younger was with his dad and put his quarters in and started playing. I was being cocky and didn’t want to out right beat this kid so I went easy the first round, and got beat. That shitty kid was actually pretty decent or I just sucked more then I thought. So I tried the 2nd round, and that fucking kid beat me again..I was mad but I kept my composure, until that shitty kids dad said out loud to his son, He sucked didn’t he. I turned to the kid and dad Yelled FUCK YOU! and walked away from the kid, his dad, and my female friend LIVID. I stormed out of the arcade yelling about how i sucked at street fighter, and walked out of the Mall. My friend had to call me to figure out where I was. She is still mad at me til this very day. Nerdiest moment.

Spoon07:

When I was moving in to my new house my brother in law and I
decided that it was break time when we found my stash of lightsabers and
costumes. So my first day in the new neighborhood before anyone even knew our
names we were out in the middle of the road as the Giant Viking vs. Commodore
Barry swinging light up plastic toys at each other, and we were into it too, if
limbs were struck behind the back or off the ground they went, and we were
shouting in character insults at each other. The wives (avowed non-nerds) were
actually egging us on too, I think we figured the winner was getting extra laid
or something.

You know now that I think about it in five years I still don’t think I really
have met any of my neighbors.

neonlexicon:

My friend is a photographer & loves taking photos of me in costume for her portfolio. This involves quite a few occasions of me being in costume in public (most recently I had what I assume was a class field trip at a park following us around & watching.) Anyway, the best was a couple of years back she wanted to take pics of my Catwoman costume. We decided it would be appropriate to take them on a rooftop. Rather than ask around, we decided to trespass & climb on the roof of an abandoned building downtown. This was already a fun situation since we were walking through the midst of downtown on a weekday with me in black spandex, carrying a whip. Once we climbed up some scaffolding to get onto the roof of the building, a cop car pulls up and stops. My immediate thought is, “Oh shit, they’re going to make us leave & possibly ticket us”. No… instead, the cop rolls down his window, looks up & yells “Catwoman!? AWESOME!!!”, gives a thumbs up, and drives off. I still don’t know who was nerdier in this situation. It may have been the cop.

Neil Shurley:

I did a 6 minute presentation to an audience of 100 or so community folks, mostly designers and architects, about Spock as Wisdom Figure, ending with me flashing a Vulcan salute and unzipping my jacket to reveal a Star Trek uniform shirt.
You can watch the presentation here: http://vimeo.com/19254133

Ridureyu:

I saw Harry Potter 4 with my sister and a married couple who were friends of mine. Both girls completely lost it in the theater, as zasabi7 would have said. But they did so constantly. Loudly. Every two minutes. often when the CAMERA ANGLES didn’t match their mental image. Screaming and raging if a line was different from the book. or if it was the same, but they wanted it delivered differently. If anything didn’t look “right,” they threw a fit.

I tried to ask them to be quiet, but they (sister mostly) just got angry at me. And then about midway through, another person in the theater said, “Miss, could you please keep it down?” I assumehe meant both, but my sister was closest to him. She lost. it.

“Shut up! this is how I ENJOY THE MOVIE! Don’t stop me from enjoying the movie! IF YOUW ANT QUIET DURING THE MOVIE, YOU SHUT UP FIRST!” Nobody else said anything.

Finally, when the movie ended, and the credits began to roll, everybody (except two people) started clapping. yeah, we applauded the movie to tryto counteract two very loud women. My sister and her friend flipped out, yelling, “YOU’RE ALL IDIOTS! NONE OF YOU ARE TRUE FANS!”

I and the other woman’s husband were just very sheepish and quiet for the rest of the day. Oddly, both women completely deny that this ever happened.

Thom Langan:

Not that long ago, shortly after the latest incarnation of Supergirl made her first appearance, I ran into a cute girl I worked with checking out the DVD of Supergirl. Trying to be suave I walked up and asked if she was a Supergirl fan.

She said she sorta was but only knew the character from the Superman cartoon on WB. Knowing I was a bit of a movie buff she asked me if the movie was any good, and being the total comic dork I am I told her it was ok but it was not the Supergirl she knew. With a questioning look from her I then proceeded to spend the next 25 minutes or so explaining about all the various incarnations of Supergirl, from the comics (10 at that time) as well as the different movie and TV incarnations. All the while the crowd around us grew as I became more and more animated in my rant, growing rather angry at the total dismissal of the PAD created Linda Danvers version.

As I finish, starting to calm down she and the assembled crowd just looks at me in utter shock and pity. Finally she asks why I know so much about a “girls’ character”. I’ve finally noticed the people around us, and sheepishly admit because she is a tertiary, maybe secondary, character in the comics I read and I need to know this stuff. She just sighed and rolled her eyes, thrusting the DVD in my chest and walking off muttering to herself about why she always attracts the weird ones.

Geek and Wife:

This last summer was up visting my in-laws. One of my wifes cousins is named Khan…. So we were at the mall and there my wife and I on the second floor, across the way on the first floor was her cousin… She first tried to call him on his cell, he didnt answer, so the only reasonable thing to do, The shatner yell, KHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNN! At least the security guard that responded was a bit of a geek and didnt kick us out.

ThePreacherSchevia:

Back when I was in middle school, I was going through a Weird Al phase (I’d argue I’m sort of still in that phase). I was at a battle of the bands and this really cute girl I was crushing on happened to be there. I went up to the sound guy and I asked him during intermission to play Weird Al’s “Eat It.” In my middle school mind at that time, the best way to impress the girl you liked was apparently to get up on stage and do something crazy. So I did that. I got up on the stage, grabbed a mic during intermission and said, “And now for something completely different.” The sound guy, taking this as his que to hit play, starts the song and what immediately followed that was basically the Napoleon Dance if he was trying to do Michael Jackson on diarrhea. I don’t remember all of what I did on the spot but one such horribly white-boy move included going from a standing position, bouncing off my ass on the floor, and somehow standing back up. The crowd went nuts. I felt like the biggest badass for making a complete fool of myself and not getting stoned to death socially for it. My crush loved what I did and then brought me over to the back corner of the big, dark room, with me thinking “I’m so gonna score,” and then she introduced me to her boyfriend.

I can’t listen to that song anymore.

Vatea42:

My boyfriend used to make fun of me for loving the Harry Potter series. For years, all I heard was “I can’t believe you are a grown woman reading books about a little boy witch flying around on a broom!” This of course, did not stop me from making him go to every movie with me. (Fair trade for every zombie movie I have sat through in the last ten years, I figure.) When I dragged him to the Prisoner of Azakban movie, he also made comments about being embarrassed to be the only adult couple there without a kid.

So, since I figured I would never seen the people around me again and I have no shame, I decided to have some fun when Goblet of Fire came out. So while we were waiting in line, I whipped out the sock puppets I had made of Harry, Ron and Hermione and loudly asked if he wanted to act out favorite scenes while we waited.
He almost left me in the theater but it was worth it.

FourandARobot:

Decided I wanted to tattoo a crescent moon on my forehead so I could be like Sailor Moon. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, told me to draw it on first. I did and we went grocery shopping. You can imagine the stares I got. When I got home, I washed it off. I was 22.

Guy:

I work in the electronics section at a Toys R Us, and I have a deep burning hatred for the Green Lantern. So, not so long ago, a guy comes up to my counter with a bunch of toys from the movie. I try to be polite and make conversation, ask if he’s seen the new movie, etc etc, and he responds with “yeah, it wasn’t that great, but it was still better than anything with Batman in it.”

Now, I just can’t stand for that, but I’m at work, so I laugh politely and continue checking out his items. So the dude goes on to say something along the lines of “yeah, Green Lantern can totally beat Batman in a fight. I don’t know why everybody loves him.”
So, I look up from what I’m doing and point out that not only has Batman punched Guy Gardner in the face and beat the tits out of Hal Jordan, but Robin broke Jordan’s trachea, and Batman had to save his life. Robin, 12 years old and in his green underwear, broke his trachea. The dude stares at me, starts to open his mouth to say something, but I hand him his bag, smile, say “thank you, have a nice day!” and walk away to the other end of the section making it look like I had something else to do.

After he leaves, I proceed to nerdrage at one of my co-workers about how Batman always wins because he’s Batman and he has a goddamn plan. Another co-worker, seeing my rant from across the store, goes onto the walkie and says “It’s okay, Guy, you’re the very best.”

I respond in the only way appropriate, with “like no one ever was.” And we proceeded to do the entire Pokemon theme song, in turns, over the walkie, until our boss told us to shut up.
tl;dr: nerdrage ends in singing Pokemon theme song over the walkie at work. Good times.

Mister White:

I have a complete Jedi outfit for conventions and such. Last fall I put it on and went down to the local mall, where I stood outside the main mall doors and assisted patrons in entering by using the Force to open the (automatic) doors for them. The response was surprisingly positive; I had many wishes for the Force to be with me. I plan to do it again this fall, and bring a photographer this time.

Chuck Topley:

It’s debatable how public this one is, but here goes: my second year in college, before Christmas break, a friend got me a lightsaber. (Luke’s green one, around 1992 or so, and I want to say this was the first time they’d been in stores in a decade or so.) I had it with me in the car as I drove up to my parents’ in Glacier, through the typical metric assload of snow. Everything was going great, until I lost control, spun, and flew in backwards into the ditch. It happened too fast to do anything about it, and there was so much snow the car and I were both fine.

I roll down the window as soon as the car stopped, grabbed my lightsaber, and leaped into the snow. Even though I was stuck, I was laughing, and I got a ride to get a tow out soon enough. With my lightsaber.

WaxTomCruise:

My sister is very big into horseback riding. She’s on her collage’s riding team, has her own horse, her room is covered wall to wall with cutouts from Horse Illustrated, basically she’s obsessed. Which is why she was so excited last Sunday to take the rest of my family (my mother, father, and myself) riding for the first time. None of us had ridden before, so it was all of our first time on a horse.

Recently, I’ve become obsessed with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. So much so that, a couple months back, I bought a custom made Cutie Mark Crusaders sweatshirt, based on the capes that Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo wear in the cartoon. As a joke, I decided to wear it to the riding event. When it came my turn to be lead around the horse arena (which was not empty, but had several girls and families riding or grooming their horses) I tied the sleeves around my neck and wore it like a cape, singing:

? We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders/On a quest to find out who we are/And we will never stop the journey/Not until we have our Cutie Marks! ?

Everybody in the arena stared in horror at me, my parents refused to take a picture of me in my moment of triumph, and my sister insisted I ruined the afternoon. Worth it.

Rejones1207:

So the first time my wife and I met was 4 years ago and we were playing the game Celebrity. My celebrity was Spiderman, which she drew and had to act out. That night she wrist-sprung her hand at me to a disco “caught fish” response. One night I told my lady friend to go out with her friends to this “Summer’s Eve”y bar that required your name be on a list or be with someone whose name was on the list where we lived (D.C.). My friends got some friends to harass her on the dance floor. Meanwhile, I had been allowed in the bar wearing normal clothing, with a youth XL spiderman costume underneath. I went to the bathroom, took my external clothing off, and put the mask on, and went and broke it up, ninja style. I then dropped to a knee and proposed (really lame twist, I know). I was then immediately thrown out of the bar (post “yes”). I went across the street and waited for the celebration at “5 guys” (Rob, you know the bar). I have to own the record for fastest to be thrown out of a bar following a proposal.

Baptismbyfireball:

During a question and answer session, I asked US senator Byron Dorgan what his favorite Pokemon was.

tooDrunktoTasteChicken:

During a cross-listed political theory/women & gender studies course:
We were assigned a reading where the author made the claim that we were entering in an era of “cyborg politics” wherein we would have to rethink the political because of our growing dependence on technology, and used the replicants from “Blade Runner” as an example. The professor asked for opinions on the text and, after what seemed like a few crickets, I start talking about how there’s a distinction between cyborgs and androids–commonly understood as biological beings augmented with technology vs. technological human-form beings–that wasn’t made in the text, and that the author was describing a politics about humans become cyborgs and not about robots that resembled humans; unless, of course, the author was making the [unsubstantiated]claim that “humans” were merely human-form robots in the first place, in which case that problematizes his paper as then the augmentation of men by machine is not as distressing of an idea, but this does complicate his/her retelling of a history of the political without–which was never, then, without–technology; although, the author–and again, this wasn’t explicated in the text–could merely be drawing on this aspect of the android/cyborg relational dichotomy, humans wanting to become part-machine vs the impulse to create machines that mimic the human form others are moving away from–best explored by Star Trek: First Contact wherein the android, Data, is tempted by the experience of the flesh as offered by the half-organic half-bionic Borg Collective–to make the subtle observation that any aspirational politics will encounter a counter-politics going in what would seem to be the opposite direction.

Being a political theory course, the class was used to long, complicated, pseudo-philosophical monologues. I was then somewhat surprised when all I got was a room full of lesbians and “empowered women” looking as if a giant penis just flew completely over their heads.

Ricky Namara:

A bit about my little bro: he’s 8, and he absolutely LVOE the new ThunderCats, clinging to my old Sword of Omen like it was the Holy Grail. He took it everywhere: to play, to bed and even to school. Well, you know what happens when you brought your toys to school, right? Some crusty old hag of a teacher-type is going to take them away and give you shit about it.

That’s what happened last week: he got an earful from this “mummy” and pretty much got humiliated over his obsession over the ThunderCats (he has a habit of excitedly telling his friends who didn’t have cable about the show), calling it “unnatural” and “noneducational” and “embarrassing for the school”. When we were done, I can tell he was close to tears for being “outed” as an uber-nerd by the mummy.

Well, I wouldn’t stand for THAT! As we leave, right in front of the school and right outside of the teacher’s lounge window, I borrowed his Sword of Omen, put it up to my face, and shouted Lion-O’s “ThunderCats Call” right there in front of baffled parents and giggling classmates. Problem solved: little bro is no longer down in the dumps, and old mummy can only stare wide-eyed through the window seeing a 30-year-old dude shouting “HOOOO!” like a lunatic.

Moral of the story is: blood is thicker than water, and even more so if you’re nerd siblings. Besides, what’s that mummy gonna do? Put me in detention?

Shadey54:

Nothing I did but I got to see it and it was amazing.
Twilight movie in theaters right? Horrible horrible act I know but as soon as Edward appeared on the screen this little child like..seven years old suddenly jolts out of their seat and screams. “Cedric Diggory is alive! I must tell Dumbledore!”
And runs down the aisles before booking it out of theater parents in tow.

Mike Donohue:

I walked through the ghetto dressed as Inu Yasha.

. . . . Yyyyyeah.
High School. There was this geeky girl I had a crush on. She was into cosplay, and she was trying to get me into it too. There was going to be a Halloween party at her church and she invited me, so I started listing off characters with long hair that I could easily do a cosplay of. Inu Yasha got the best reaction so, as a nerdy guy desperate to make a good impression on a nerdy girl, I made an Inu Yasha costume. (And by “I” I mean my mom made it. )

The day finally arrived, and I got dropped off at the church, which was in the middle of . . . not the worst area in town, but pretty close to it. I went into the party and looked around desperately for the girl. Couldn’t find her anywhere. I didn’t know anyone there, and they didn’t know me. It was very awkward. After about forty-five minutes, I decided to give my folks a call and get picked up. I didn’t have a cell phone, so I had to go look for a pay phone. I had to walk four blocks, in full costume, to a convenience store and call for a ride, then walk four blocks back to wait for my parents. When I got home, I hopped online and found out that she had gotten grounded. And forgot to let me know that she wouldn’t be at the party.
(Same girl would end up dating me, dumping me at Otakon, getting back together with me, then dumping me at Otakon AGAIN the next year. Oy.)

Dynath:

Three of my friends and I were toy shopping on black friday. We waited outside a Toys R Us for 2 hours at 3am till they opened but we weren’t first in line. One of my freinds was depressed because he was sure he was going to miss a Gi-Joe exclusive. The store staff unlocked the doors and people started piling in. But me deciding I was tired of my mopy freind hit on an idea. I litterally yelled “Leeroyyyy Jenkins!” and ducked down running forward. Oddly enough everyone was startled enough to pause and look back letting me charge through. I got about 10 feet into the store before I was tackled by one of the staff. My friends slipped in in the confusion and though I was kicked out they managed to get the exclusives they were looking for and I got a perminant ban from that particular store because I almost caused a riot.

Procinctu:

I was waiting to fly home from a tour in Afghanistan and was
snowed in at the base air terminal with about 200 service members. After the first
few hours of sitting around dejectedly the group we had been gaming with took
possession of a table in the center of the room. We broke out the battle mat,
dice, and books. Then we made D&D characters while I sketched out a scenario
loosely based on an old episode of Dr. Who with Tom Baker.

For the next day we gamed straight through. The other people
in the room just watched us as we laughed, shouted, and gamed as if we were
alone. The antagonists in the scenario were aliens using organic technology in
a D&D fantasy world. It was gruesome and wonderful to describe.

One moment really sticks with me. The players had been
getting thrashed by the aliens and managed to steal one of the alien flyers. The
players were 100% in character. They hooped and hollered as they flew through
the countryside smashing aliens and terrorizing the peasantry. I sort of
realized how loud we were getting and did a quick look around the room. Most of
the other guys all around us just looked burned out and we were having a blast.
I felt really glad in that moment that we decided to game that day.

Tanzim W. Rahman:

Me and one of my closest friends organized a marathon Batman: The Animated Series party once. A lot more people showed up at my friend’s place for the party than we expected. I didn’t know half of the people there. However, we all started watching the DVDs and having a good time.

That is, until the episode ‘Nothing to Fear’ started. When Batman said the “I am vengeance…” line, tears streamed down my face. One of my friends noticed and he freaked out: “Dude! Why are you crying?” That just made it worse and I couldn’t stop myself.
So yeah, Batman’s sheer awesomeness made me cry in front of about 15-20 strangers.

Michael_C:

In 10th grade I went to the Fall conference for Junior State of America (a political organization made up of high school students the nation wide). The main business of these events was a series of debates on a variety of issues, wherein two people signed up to do the pro and con positions a couple weeks in advance, and after they said their piece, people in the audience could volunteer to give impromptu arguments for either opinion.

I attended a debate over whether or not we should pursue space colonization in a room that contained at least two hundred students, and watched as the guy speaking against the human pioneering of the stars went for comedy. He was loud, blustery, and ridiculous, and mentioned something about space AIDS.

Naturally after that a lot of people in the audience wanted to give their thoughts, myself included. I managed to get called up to argue in favor of colonization, and started with the line “Space: the Final Frontier. That’s pretty much all I wanted to say, but now that I’m up here, I’ll say some other things about space.” I’ve got kind of a broadcast-y voice, so I had everyone’s attention while shouting a lot of statements about the majesty of the stars, the probable ease and joy of terraforming, and finished the whole thing by reciting the first verse of the Firefly theme song with the conviction of a nerd reciting the Firefly theme song.

I got some pretty thunderous applause (though I doubt anyone understood most of what I referenced), and someone moved to give me more time to speak. I was actually voted down, but whoever was officiating let me answer questions anyway. It was timed perfectly so that I finished by answering “What do we do about space AIDS?!” by immediately shooting back “space condoms” and stepping off the podium. To my great delight, I won a Best Speaker award.

Trogdor12597:

Its not really humiliating…more renewing of a geek’s faith in humanity. I was being dragged to see some relationship movie (i think it was Valentines Day) by my now ex-girlfriend. As incentive to watch it with her she had purchased me a lightsaber from wallmart. As we were getting out of the car i extended the blade and yelled “LIGHTSABER FIGHT!” and preceded to inspire a 15 man lightsaber fight in the theatre parking lot which even dragged in passers by from the road.

BlackMarketTrombones:

I was at Stake ‘n Shake with a couple friends (most of whom are non-nerds) a few weeks ago, arguing with one of them about Crisis on Infinite Reboots, and I referenced an article from here. Since mere explanation could not do it justice, one of my friends with a fancy phone offered to look it up to share with the group.
“What’s the site called?” he asked.
“Topless Robot!” I said cheerfully, forgetting for the moment that I am the group prude.
There was a stunned silence, then laughter. “Whoa, how’d you find THAT site?”
“My sister showed it to me!” I squawked, nobly throwing her under the bus.

“How did SHE find it?”
It did help that the article in question was about Jason Todd and DC’s Penis Conspiracy.

Themythdorkage:
I went to the beach and forgot my sunglasses, but the sun was wickedly hardcore super bright as the sun tends to be. So i went to my car and searched to find something to cut down the glare. I come across One of my Darth Vader masks (the full helmet and mask type with the voice box)… Tinted lenses… Awesome.. problem solved. So yes i went onto the beach in my swimming suit, my flip flops, and my Darth Vader mask. Picture if you will, a 6’5, blindingly white, count my ribs skinny man wearing light blue Hawaiian print bathing suit and a full Darth Vader mask. My non nerd friends, which is all that i went to the beach with that day, just started laying into me for the rest of the day as did every single person that walked by me. My favorite taunt was from a group of frat boys who told me to “Go back to Charlotte” and threw beer cans at me. My friends almost got in a fight because of that one. I just ignored them and read my Brandon Sanderson novel until it was time to go and i was a bright toasty lobster red, except on my face.

And now, the winners. Now, I had originally said that I probably wanted “most shameful” stories, but not to hold me to it. And this is why I try to never set anything in the contests in stone, because inevitably there will be a story like this that isn’t what I think I’m looking for, but stuns me with its awesomeness:

Lady Rainicorn:

I was nine when Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix came out and, along with many, many soon-to-be nerds of my generation, I lost my tiny mind. About a month before the release date, I was given a flyer for a midnight opening of the local WH Smiths. The main attraction, of course, was getting to start OOTP at least nine hours before anybody else I knew, but what also caught my eye was the promise of a fancy dress competition, with a list of Harry Potter merchandise at least an inch long as the first prize. So, with the kind of determinism only a nine year old, slightly insane fangirl can muster, I decided that, come hell or high water, I was going to win that prize.

I knew I had to stand out from the crowd. Anyone can throw on a bin bag and a witches’ hat and call themself Hermione. I had to think outside the box. I spent almost a week trying, and failing, to come up with the perfect costume idea. And then it came to me – I would go as the golden snitch.

My mum, God bless her, spent the best part of a fortnight constructing, honestly, the best costume I have ever seen. It was based around a hula hoop, with the actual ball made up of two domes of gold crete paper which were stuck together with gaps for my head, legs and arms. To this day, I have no idea how she managed to get it to hold up, especially since I…well, I wasn’t a small child. Obese would probably be the correct term. In fact, the amount of crete paper she had to use to make this outfit would probably have kept a primary school happy for an entire term.

So, it got to the day. The Day, and it was about 11 o’clock at night and my parents drove me down to the bookshop to join the queue. My costume was so big I could barely fit in the car and it was raining, so as soon as I stepped out of the house it started to melt, but I was so excited I didn’t care. I was going to get OOTP and I was going win this competition.

We got there and the queue was already half way down the street…and nobody else is in costume. Nobody. No, there were some teenage girls near the front of the queue in normal clothes with wizard hats on, but that was literally it. Oh, the looks I got. And I stood in that queue for an hour and a half and nobody ever mentioned the fancy dress competition, let alone the prize. And you know what? I did not care one jot. Because my costume was fucking awesome.

Of course, in reality, I was an overweight child wearing a leotard, a hula hoop and a soggy pile of crete paper, but goddamnit, I didn’t care. And I think that alone makes it the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done. Although, pulling the Vulcan hand salute in my prom pictures comes a close second…

Yeah, it’s way over the word count, but I’d feel a cad if I didn’t recognize Lady Raincorn’s ability to take what could have been an infinitely traumatic incident and see only the nerdy awesomeness of it. That’s incredible, and certainly worthy of a shirt. Also, major props to Lady Rainicorn’s mom… I guess she’d be Dame Raincorn?

Anyways, not to say that all the winners aren’t shameful..

Dknygothboi:

A few years ago I decided to audition for Who want’s to be a superhero> I had to send in an audition video showing me as my character. His name was Cyn who was a half angel/half demon hybrid assassin from heaven sent to hell to take out the forces of evil before they were able to reach earth. After a eons of service he tried to return to Heaven but since he spent too much time in Hell he was not allowed entry. Angry at god and armed with a wide array of angelic weapons and his gauntlet of light which shot bolts of lightning and hellfire he fell to Earth and took a job a a social worker helping troubled teens by day and battling the dark forces of Satan’s army at night.

So on to the humiliation…I lived in Queens NY at the time and decided to get dressed up in my feathery angel wings that were about 4 feet long, black spandex tights and tight black shirt, a gauntlet made from an old suit of armor and spiked up silver hair> Tossed on some huge goth knee high boots with 5″ platforms and took to the streets with..wait for it…My mom! Yes me and my mom walked around the streets of Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx shooting footage of me fighting invisible forces of evil, getting reactions from city dwellers on the Subway trying to get them to cheer me on and having my mom do all the filming. The best was when I tied a rope around my waist and asked these two guys if they would hoist me up using the fire escape so it looked like I was flying and landing on the dumpster. PS the rope snapped and I fell in the dumpster and broke a wing. If that wasn’t sad enough I had to ride the A train home covered in god knows what with a broken wing, torn spandex and my mom laughing at me the entire time. The video has become a family favorite.

Man, this story starts with asking him mom to film him gadding about the city in a fallen angel costume, and just gets more mortifying awful from there. To people who have never been to New York City — the NYC subway is very much not the place where you want to appear dressed in cosplay of any sort. Yes, there are weirder people on the subways than you, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that you do not want to stand out in front of the weirder people, because you do not want to attract their attention. And finally…

Flippanthropic:

Some of you old-timers may be familiar with the True Faith Hymn, the True Faith being an SF-fannish hoax creed that states that our great deity Mota lives in the body of a green cat on the moon. And that, if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.

In the dim days of 1982, my long-suffering love of my life and I were motoring from NYC to ChiCon IV, the World SF convention. We stopped to stay overnight with an old college friend of mine who we were meeting on the campus of the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As we strolled amidst the students on the campus, what to our wondering eyes did appear but 3 or 4 of the ubiquitous Campus Crusade for Christ, locally known as the God Squad.

There was an older man, a young woman, and one or two young men haranguing the crowd that they were horrible sinners on the fast track to DOOM! We were dismayed to see that no one in the area seemed to have any idea of how to effectively heckle these goofs.

Then the woman pointed at my lovely lady and called her a harlot.

We looked at each other and immediately began to sing: “We are sinking deep in sin, won’t you come and push us in? / As the flames grow higher and higher, we are sinking in the mire / we are sinking deep in sin, won’t you come and push us in?” The verses all follow that pattern. “We are drinking beer with gin, won’t you pour some vodka in? /As the flames grow higher and higher, we are drinking up the mire / ” followed by “We are sinking deep in skin. won’t you come and push it in? As the flames grow higher and higher, we are swiving in the mire /” I must say, I don’t think we were ever in better voice.

The CCfC group became gratifyingly livid. As we finished the third verse, to a loud round of applause, the only reply came from the female member of the group, who pointed a trembling finger at us and said we’d be the first to burn for leading all those people astray.

A true fan and true nerd’s finest moment. We waved to everyone and left.

Some of you younger nerds might not have any idea of what Flippanthropic is talking about, but rest assured, it’s fucking outstanding. And it’s always nice to see people who condemn nerds — when there are a few more genuinely evil forces in the world — get freaked the fuck out.

And that’s that! Congrats to the winners, thanks to everyone who entered, and of course, the most thanks to Arcane. I’m back to giving away TR shirts for a while, but I have kind of a special contest in mind for Friday, so please stop by.