Show me your (nerd) honor! No your OTHER (nerd) honor!

I figured I should post this one before we got too far past Halloween. Don't worry it's only been like two weeks, I'm sure you're still thinking about costumes a lot.

So there I was at work, casually making my way to the bathroom to relinquish a stream of #1 into a porcelain bowl to liberate my bladder from the tyrannical constraint of the evil fluids lording over it. In order to accomplish this goal I must leave my homeland of “Quality Control” and venture past the outskirts of “Information Technology”. It’s only like a 20 second walk. This is a route I enjoy taking because the IT department is full of cool / funny people that have many personal interests similar to my own because… you know… we’re all nerds. I had not yet discovered the true importance of that word, but I was about to.

You see, it’s Halloween day here at work. Earlier in the day everyone was dressed up in a variety of getups… (Pictures courtesy of some folks at work)

Some ridiculous

Some stupid

And some just plain awesome. 
(Please note there is no wig in this picture, that’s his actual hair)

So naturally some of the office nerds were out and about, running amuck.

 See: nerds running amuck.

But we aren't here to designate superlative costumes, we're here to rediscover what it means to be a "nerd". It was now later in the day and costumes all over the office had disappeared back into the duffle bags from whence they came. However, as with any event of relative stature there were lingering pockets of reminiscence scattered throughout the floor. The corner of the IT department I was passing on my way to the john was no exception. A small spattering of nerds stood conversing in friendly, slightly excited tones

“Slightly” may be a slight understatement

Up til this point, everything was right with the world. Nerdy merriment was rampant with many lulz to be had and I was lazily musing over the best way to kill the next few hours at work. I had slowed my walk and turned to better observe the nerd clump, that’s when one of them said it...

“…yeah but I’m the biggest nerd here!”

That’s about the time shit got real.

All the laughing and joking ceased immediately. All the people he had been talking to became deathly quiet and just stared at him. Some people that had been sitting quietly at their desks, not engaged in the conversation at all, had now craned their necks to throw challenging stares over their cubicle walls.

After all, this now involved them too.

Many people probably didn't even know what was going on but still stared. I mean really, if everyone else in the room is looking at something you're going to join in assuming there's a reason everyone else is. Rubbernecking 101, man.

Even passerbys like myself made and maintained eye contact. We were curious.

Due to a slow-rolling snowball effect, eventually the entire department was boring invisible eye-lasers directly into the offender’s face.

This man had single-handedly garnered the contemptuous attention of everyone this side of the floor, and he'd done it with half a sentence uttered in a few seconds. One thing was apparent: this was serious fucking business and this man had better present some god damn evidence soon or shit was going to get ugly. But true to the nature his supposed title, he didn't react very well to this kind of social pressure, and didn't say a thing.

I found the entire situation to be uncontainably amusing. I just couldn’t get over how it was that phrase that had instantly turned everyone against him. Not some racial slur, not a sexist joke, nothing political, but a modestly cocky proclamation that he had the largest collection of star wars memorabilia in the room. I lol’d. 

No really, I laughed quite loudly and quickly explained why this was so funny. Other people were in obvious agreement when they joined me in a quick chuckle. The situation was soon defused and people were back to their workday. In retrospect, I probably saved that man's nerd honor from what could have easily been a brutal and sacrilegious pillaging. He owes me his life…

…and much more importantly, his precious Jango Fett bobblehead