A couple weekends ago my friends and I went pub crawling in San Fransisco. There really wasn't a whole lot happening that night and I had made the mistake of agreeing to being the designated driver while my friends and everyone we met were busy getting obliterated. I had engaged in regular bar talk with some people that we had randomly met and though I never tire of watching a drunk try to formulate thoughts, I found myself slightly bored and irritated. Not one to wallow in self pity for attention, I decided to make a game out of talking to drunks that approached me.

When a couple guys came over to talk to my group of friends, I looked at them incredulously and said in a vaguely European accent, "Gentlemen." None of them seemed to get a joke that anyone who played Team Fortress 2 would get in a heartbeat. But, they seemed to suspect I was just being goofy and perhaps intoxicated, so they let it slide and started up the usual lines girls have heard since the pilot of The Pickup Artist aired. My friends seemed interested, but as the sober nanny of the group, I played the cockblock card and continued the beginning of the "Meet the Spy" video. "Tell me, did anyone manage to buy me a beer on the way here? No? Then we still have a problem."

The night continued in the same fashion. I did everything in my power to recite as much Team Fortress 2 that I could manage. Whether it was explaining that grass grows, birds fly, sun shines and brother I hurt people or how the difference between an assassin and a crazed gunman was that one's a job and the other's mental sickness, I found that I couldn't be more pleased to talk to befuddled drunk people. I suspect my love for griefing had finally spilled over into real life, but at least I wasn't spraying fire into a friendly sniper's scope or purposely building my dispenser in front of my sentry. Although, at the end of the night I did ask my friend if I could borrow her phone while she was speaking to her boyfriend, only to shout "This is Scout! Rainbows make me crrryyyyy." I'm surprised they still want to take me out after that.



The only problem was that the lines only worked sometimes. Most of the time, it was the TF2 equivalent to yelling "DO A BARREL ROLL" at a hockey game. Sometimes people actually did their best to engage in conversation with me, scrunching up their red faces as they tried to decipher if 'erecting a dispenser' was code for something dirty before finding someone else to talk to. The most disappointing thing about the night was that despite how giddy I was confusing drunks, no one understood what I was referencing. I couldn't believe that in the span of one night I didn't meet a single person who played Team Fortress 2.

After talking with other geeks I knew who reference games in everyday conversation, they assured me that if I was going to continue down this path, I'd have to get used to the blank stares. Thus is the life of a geek away from the internet.