MA geeks

I thought I might share an interesting social aspect I've noticed aobut being a martial arts geek.

I'm the type of person that really gets deeply into the subjects that appeal to me. When I was a young boy I was into Spiderman comic books. I always had to have them. I still have spiderman stuff everywhere since my family always buys it for me even though I gave up buying the comics years back....but I was always know as a comic book geek because if my deep interest in the spidy character.

Video Games were another thing I spent too much time on. I still do, even though I spend much less time. I was there when the first space invaders game showed up at the pinball arcade down the street. I took my fare share of jabs and pokes about being a video game freak / geek / etc while growing up (and I use that term loosely).

I work in the software field, on the quality side. I had a strong interest in computers and all related aspects for some time (yea past tense...sick of it now). Of course, when I'm at a social gathering meeting new people and the discussion of careers and work come up I get the usual...oh so your a computer geek, maybe you can help me with mine. The geek jabs are always an expected conversation topic when work comes up.

I'm also now know Fitness nut/geek/freak or as my wife like to put it..a food Nazi. That certainly spurs a lot of juicy discussion here in the US where a large population of the worlds fattest people are created.

So there are all kinds of geeks into all kinds of things. I'm really into MA. I currently train Aikido, Hapkido, and TaeKwonDo. I've trained in Kajukenbo in the past. I'm always up for a MA training session, trading techniques / philosophies with other stylists, or just having a discussion about some MA topic. I am deffinately a MA geek, no doubt about it.

The interesting thing I have noticed is that people certainly recognize that I am MA geek when it gets to the discussion of my hobbies, but most are not so willing to start tossing out the geek comments like they do with other topics.

People don't seem to make fun of MA geeks as much as other geeks...at least not to their face.

sorry..I didn't think this would be such a long post.

Hmm, some of my co-workers know I do aikido, and have seen demos we've done for bring your children to work day. They have no problems comparing it to WWF, etc. directly to my face. I just sigh, and get over it. They are perfectly well aware that I can't demonstrate on them without assuming a great deal of risk.

The one person who used to jump out of corners to try to scare me no longer does that though. The occational snide remark can be ignored.

Ron

You mean Kato?

Now eez not ze TIME, Kato!

"the enthusiastic, to those who are not, are always something of a trial..." I can't remember who said that. Has it always been the case that the passionate/enthusiastic are branded as inferior (a "geek")...or is this a relatively modern phenomena? What does the word "geek" mean to people anyway???

Yeah kato...but its not appropriate at work to hand kato his head! Not that I wasn't tempted a few times...

Ron

Karen King wrote: Has it alwayss been the case that the passionate/enthusiastic are branded as inferior (a "geek")...or is this a relatively modern phenomena? What does the word "geek" mean to people anyway???

I started out being called a "nerd," which at my college was a label worn proudly by everyone there (at the movies shown on the weekends, there'd be a reminder slide saying, "Nerds, silence your watches") -- a "nerd" was a brainy/studious person and there was nothing inferior about it although I definitely ran into a little bit of "jock versus nerd" stuff.

When I was younger, teens were occasionally referred to as "geeky" when they were tall, awkward and socially inept as teens often are.

More recently, around here (Massachusetts) "geek" has been used to describe a nerd who was also awkward as opposed to merely seriously studious. I think "geek" has recently lost the awkwardness connotation as technology has infiltrated society so more and more people have the opportunity to be geeky/nerdy. So now when people call someone a "computer geek," they tend to say it with respect for that person's knowledge. Geeks today aren't necessarily assumed to be socially inept (nerds were, though we did fine together), just extremely -- fanatically, even -- knowledgeable about their field of expertise.

Most people I know who refer to someone as a "geek" aren't considering that person inferior. So, now you've got the Massachusetts view -- how about the rest of you?

I'm definitely a martial arts geek above all of my other hobbies! I would literally talk on the phone with some of my friends (some of which are girls who have NO knowledge of Martial Arts whatsoever) and out of nowhere I start talking about martial arts and what I'm doing with it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, LOL! It's SOOOO bad that I have to apologize to the person for boring them to death! LOL! However, of course...the majority of the people I talk to about it don't make fun of me for it or whatever and they definitely don't try to scare me (that much at least, LOL). Of course...I do occasionally get a few people who'd say how ineffective martial arts are and what not...but I always ask them if they want me to prove them wrong and they usually decline! ; )