Believe it or not, when I was in 5th grade, I was a painfully shy, awkward mess of a person with only 1 or 2 friends. I wore sweatpants most days to school that I pulled up way too far. I didn’t wear glasses, but if I did I would’ve looked like Urkel. I was a highly sensitive kid, and took everything personally. I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but I still have a clear and vivid memory of every time someone insulted me, whether they meant to or not.

I still remember to this day when someone called me a nerd. It was the most humiliating mud anyone had ever slung at me. To me, it was worse than calling me a curse word. I spend the rest of the month plotting my revenge. I started collecting red ants outside my house, but they ended up biting me, so I decided to try something else. After a few days it turned into blowing up their house. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford explosives, and I figured out that I didn’t have the time to get the proper permitting. It became too complicated, so I resorted to staring daggers at him passive aggressively when he wasn’t looking at me. I heard he still can’t sleep to this day, because of my powerful evil staring skills.

I’m still a fan of the Transformers. For Christmas, my wife got me a pair of custom Bumblebee shoes and a Transformers hoodie. Right now, I’m listening to music on my Transformer headphones that make the classic sound of transforming when they power on and off. I tell you this because when I was in seventh grade, I passionately spoke to a classmate about the Transformers and how cool they were, and he had the audacity to tell me Transformers was a kid’s toy and I was a geek for still liking them. He was a super mature seventh grader I thought sarcastically when he said. Of course, I plotted my revenge against him. I planned on running over him with a truck that looked like Optimus Prime, but I was only in seventh grade, so I didn’t have a drivers license yet. Also, to drive a truck, I would have needed an addition CDL license and truck driving courses. Instead, I stared daggers at him passive aggressively. To this day, he’s in a mental hospital from the passive aggressive daggers I stared at him.

At the end of junior high and into my high school years, I discovered the magical world of video games. If you played video games in my era, it was like wearing a scarlet letter. Parents thought they were too violent and would turn you into a serial killer. Kids at school thought you were a loser for playing them instead of hanging out with friends or going to the mall. I remember one day my mom came up and saw me and my brother playing games and said that video games were a horrible and a waste of time, and that we should go outside and get some fresh air. She also called them anti-social and that I should try to make some friends (in other words, don’t be a geek). Of course, I had to plot my revenge against my mother for saying such a thing. Last night, I took her to the hospital. I’m not saying that it was because of my 40 year revenge plot against her, but I’m also not saying it isn’t my plot. Maybe she’s just old.

Now I think I need to plot revenge against society, because I was geek shamed for liking all those things. Now that I’m grown up, Transformers, video games, and being a geek, is not only not shamed, but they are cool, admired and possibly make you rich. Ask Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and any geek or nerd that spent way too much time in their basement playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Now those geeks are making millions and billions inventing Microsoft, Facebook, Tesla, becoming famous cosplayers at conventions, or streaming for hours playing video games in front of hundreds of thousands of fans on Twitch.

I should have grown up in 90’s, because brooding was in much more acceptable. Instead, I grew up in the optimistic 80’s. I was a bad fit for the 80’s like my jean jacket was a bad fit for my body. I was never a fan of fan of mullets, parachute pants, leg warmers, or jean jackets, or being shamed for liking cool things.

If I was born a decade later, I would have been a nerd and geek at just the right time to make money for my hobbies, instead of shamed for it. I also would been looked at as cool because I was so good at brooding.

On the other hand, being born in the wrong era caused me to hone my revenge skills much better. If I would’ve been born in the right era, I would’ve been a well adjusted person, which would have make me suck at revenge plotting, bitter writing, and passive aggressiveness rage. I might have turned out to be a success and where would that have lead me? Certainly not to starting a bitter blogger that wrote about things that made me bitter. The world would have been robbed of 1000’s of posts of complaining about the same 4 things over and over again in such deceptively clever ways.

Thanks to my years of study in Geek Mythology, I am a much better villain in my revenge plot against the world, and I will make Superhero really happy someday. They will get to defeat me in a humiliating way, that will give them much more credibility as a Superhero. What more could the world ask for? While you are pondering that question, here are some Bitter Friday Giftures to make you forget I ever asked that…

Believe it or not…

I remember how triggered when…

That was some major…

I spent many months…

I was going to blow up…

So instead, I did something much worse…

I’m not going to say that my mom is in the hospital…

But I’m also not going to say she isn’t there…

I’m bitter because they shamed me…

And laughed at me…

Clearly I was born in the wrong era…

But after years of studying Geek Mythology…

And for that…

And it’s where I became…

ARRRGGGHHHHHHH

Bitter Geek Mythology Ben