Just For Fun - Old Buttons

When I was a teenager, there was a store stuck way in the back of a little indoor shopping center on Main Street. Yes. We have a Main Street.

This claustrophobic, cluttered space was one of the few places where a geek child (such as myself) could find cool stuff. Cool for us, that is. Gaming manuals. Cool miniatures. Super cool amulets. An astounding variety of dice in all shapes and colors. Advice on gaming if you were looking.

And buttons. Snarky, geek buttons that the mean girls at school wouldn't have gotten, but we did. I still have some of those buttons and thought it might be fun to share a couple.

(Yes, that's also an Eden Winters calculator on my desk,)

---

The reference in this one is obvious, but please remember that the Hitchhiker books began being published as novels when I was fifteen. Tell me there's no better age to read those books with your friends and fall over laughing and repeat lines endlessly.

There just isn't.

Those of us who had grown up on Asimov and Clarke and serious Science Fiction had never encountered an animal like Douglas Addams before. (Yes, there was humor in SF from time to time but nothing like this.)

So, of course, this was an in joke, a cool-geek thing (even if that was an oxymoron at the time.)

---

I've never been able to find the source of this quote. If you know, please tell me and make sure you include verifiable references. Even Goodreads quotes doesn't cite an author.

Ha.

But as you can see, the quote's been around a long time and we found it hilarious.

Now, in the years when getting out of bed is becoming physically more difficult, and breakfast is a nirvana of coffee and a return to life, this isn't a funny saying. It's one of life's truths.

What? Zombie apocalypse is starting? Yes, yes. I'll be right with you. Need to finish this second cup.

---

Again, for most geeks, the reference should be obvious.

Just in case you joined us late or your only Doctors have been the Ninth and on from there, this line was spoken by the Brigadier during the reign of the Fourth Doctor Who (Tom Baker.)

Can I confirm that this was the first instance of this quote? No. Sorry. But it was the first time I had heard it and it left me rolling on the carpet laughing.

The line refers to all manner of beasties who keep up their menacing ways throughout hails of bullets and missiles and sometimes even small nuclear explosions. (See just about every giant something monster movie of the 1950's.) It was a trope so familiar by then that the Brigadier standing there looking at his failed assault in disgust and saying this with such unruffled annoyance was hilarious.

And only cool people got the joke.

---

This last one?

Self-explanatory. The need for teenagers to push boundaries is in there, sure, but there's something in that statement that is an integral part of my personality.

Tell me I can't. Go ahead. I guarantee it'll force me to find a way.

Anyway - thank you for joining me on my little romp through the past and allowing me to share a bit of my youth.

They still make me smile. :)

Oh, and the store? It moved to a bigger location and now serves a larger community of geeks. I was just in there last Christmas and bought my son a Cthulhu ornament. Sometimes the good guys win.

---