Type "N" Personality

I'm not going to lie: I have a "type" when it comes to guys, and that type? Is the nerd.

This probably isn't news to anyone. I've always had a soft spot for nerds. Mostly because I am one myself. Sure, I am also your classic Type-A bossy bitchy persnickety overachiever drama queen, but a lot of that comes from being, at my core, basically a big old giant squishy insecure nerdo.

But lest you doubt my commitment to nerdhood, let me remind you that I married an engineer. Who is also a gamer. And who built me my gaming rig from scratch.

Why do I love nerds so much? Not an easy question to answer. Some of it ties back to my being your classic Type-A bossy bitchy persnickety overachiever -- I don't have a lot of patience for idle chatter and boring conversation. To put it as delicately as I can (which, admittedly, is not very delicate at all), I have a very low threshold for stupidity. I have never mastered the art of "small talk." Sure, I could talk about the weather, but why would I want to? The window is right there. You can see that it's raining. Why are you asking me obvious questions? Don't you have anything else you should be doing?

But stuff that matters, like whether the lycanthropy of Remus Lupin in the Harry Potter novels is actually a methaphor for homosexuality? I could talk about that kind of crap all day long. And so can my fellow nerds. In my experience, I have never had a boring conversation with my nerdular brethren. We really and genuinely wonder what the proper plural of "half-and-half" is. We don't think it is possible to get tired of Monty Python's "Dead Parrot" sketch. We know what "theorycrafting" means as it relates to World of Warcraft, and we actually care about that stuff.

Listen: getting your rotation to absolute maximum DPS as an actively-raiding arcane mage is Serious Business, dammit, and since my playing time is limited, I can't waste a single second with anyone who distills my MMORPG experience down to, "Oh, you play a gnome with pink pigtails! How cute!"

Grr. My arcane blast as a 2.2 second cast time, unbuffed. You better start running. I can mash that "5" button pretty damn hard.

Anyway. In the past I have been accused of preferring nerdy-type guys because they tend, on average, to be quieter and more bookish, and therefore less likely to sass me back when I give them a hard time. Which, granted, is pretty often, because my very favorite thing to do these days, it seems, is to be passive-aggressive, which is inherently intensive in the hard-time-giving department.

But have your met my boyfriend Spencer Reid? Or my other boyfriend Eric Beal? Or my other other boyfriend Greg Sanders? Or my absolute best boyfriend, formerly known as Knox Overstreet, later known as Dan Rydell, and now known as Will Gardner? Do you think any one of these men would have any trouble getting lippy right back at me? My husband doesn't, that's for sure, and he's a nerd in real life, he doesn't just play one on TV.

Nerds are hot, is what I am getting at. They can talk all night long and never bore you. They know fantasy football and baseball statistics and how to play hockey. They know how to order wine. They don't usually listen to crappy hipster emo music. And oh my God, are they funny. Nerds make great employees, excellent husbands, fantastic fathers, phenomenal best friends.

And, it's a hell of a lot of fun to gank the shit out of them.