Two nerds find love over large hammer, news at 11.

It’s Valentine’s Day and, cheesy greeting card industry holiday remarks aside, I thought I’d repost the story of how my British husband and I met.   This is what happens when nerds find love online. 

When you’re married, especially when you’re like Mark and I and come from two different countries, it is inevitable that you will be asked, time and time again, “how did you guys meet??”   Your audience sits and listens with anticipation, eagerly awaiting what they are sure will be a story of epic romantic proportions, complete with flowers, hearts, proposals on one knee and perhaps even a white stallion and sunset thrown in for good measure.  While I can tell you now this was hardly the case between the two star-crossed nerds of this tale, I can promise it has plenty of love, adventure, a few hearts, and  a really really large hammer.

Yes, a hammer.  A large one.  This is the story I never wrote.

It all started on a typical day in the middle of a large, bustling city.  I stood still, watching as everyone else ebbed and flowed around me, going about their business, trading goods, and standing idly in small groups here and there, chatting.  I had just left my previous… erm… organization, and I was looking for a more fulfilling role elsewhere.  Luckily for me today was the day of my interview.  I waited around nervously, shuffling from one foot to the next.  Suddenly I heard a voice say (a sexy British voice), “Hello Navie, how are you today?”  My interviewer!  Better not mess this up, and I took a deep breath and responded in turn.   The very next words from the omnipotent sexy British voice were thus: “Bloody hell!  You’re a girl!”

Perhaps I should back up.  I wasn’t so much as “standing in a large, bustling city” as I was casually parked in Ironforge, and by “I” I mean my night elf druid, and by Ironforge I mean in the popular massively multiplayer online roleplaying game World of Warcraft.  And I don’t mean “organization” so much as I mean “guild” and, while we’re at it, let’s just go ahead and replace “looking for a more fulfilling role” with “I’d like to accompany you to slay the dragon, and heal the raid members whilst you do it.”

Now that you’re caught up, the mysterious sexy-British-accent-man-who-will-quite-obviously-be-my-husband-by-the-end-of-this-tale was talking to me through TeamSpeak, a program which allows the socially crippled gamer types of the world to unite and remain awkwardly silent together in the same voice chat channel.  And even though my little night elf druid was sporting a well proportioned rack, it’s not always the case that there is a real live girl behind every girl avatar in game.  So you can imagine this man’s surprise when the voice that answered was a few (believe me, very few, inconsequential… really) octaves higher than what he expected.

Thus, these became the first words my future-husband-but-didn’t-know-it-at-the-time said to me: “Bloody hell, you’re a girl!”

My “assets”  (as a healer!) got me into the guild, a guild which I would follow and play with for many years: Fist of the Empire.   Of all the guilds on all the servers in all the World (of Warcraft)…. I had to walk into his.

As time went on and I got to know the members better, that sexy British accent came to be known as Sokah, the paladin. We began chatting more and more.  Not like “hey baby” chatting, but more like “So you haven’t slept for three days straight because you’re trying to get the materials to forge the MIGHTY HAND OF RAGNAROS!!!!!!!!!!!111111 ….. need any help?”

(Hand of Ragnaros is a very very large hammer)

So I helped this mysterious Sokah with his hammer (dirty!), a man who had to have someone in the US ship him the game so he could play on the US servers and thus continue playing with all the ex US military that make up Fist of the Empire.  He was dedicated, he didn’t sleep, and most of the time he sounded like he had just been ran over by a bus… a voice which went perfectly with threatening other male members of the guild that he was going to “fly over to the US and dangle his balls on their chin.”  Honestly, who could resist THAT?

Well, you know the ending already so the clear answer was that I couldn’t resist that.  When his hammer was forged (dirty!) and the quest completed we started talking on a more personal basis and then, one day, I proposed I just may have to visit the UK.

My offer was declined.  Politely, as is the true British style.

ME? REJECTED??  Did he not know who I was?? I was a nerdy American girl, a very rare breed indeed, sporting a nice rack!  How dare he turn down such an offer of taking our small, online relationship any further. I fumed. But the next day I managed to whittle him down into at least agreeing to meet.  And two months later, that’s exactly what we did.

We spent a week together after a move many would deem to be “crazy:”  I flew by myself to a country I had never been to before to meet someone I did not know, the gravity of which did not actually hit me until the plane touched down at London Heathrow and it wasn’t until then that I began to entertain the idea he might murder me, chop up my body, and hide my bits in the walls of his house.

But, obviously, this was not the case.

We fell  in love, and it was an amazing week.  We knew we wanted to be together, but it would not be for another year and a half until it was made possible.  We spent money and time taking trips back and forth, meeting family, seeing the sights in our respective hometowns.  I got menial jobs here and there just to pay for the next plane ticket and then I was off again on another adventure.  I spent six weeks over Christmas with him to test out how we’d do together for longer periods of time.  And we got on (and still get on) perfectly.

Then, a full year after meeting for the first time, we made the decision to just get married.  Due to immigration laws, we weren’t going to get to be together in any other way.  So we did on a rainy day in October 2007 with family and friends among us and our guild leader standing up at the alter with us as our best man.    It was small and perfect.  January 2008 I moved to the UK to be with him as his wife.

The rest is history.

Reactions to our story are always different: some people are bemused, some worried, some cannot understand that, even after all of it, why people waste time playing silly video games, but for the most part people enjoy the tale.  At the end of the day, as strange and chance a meeting as it was, it allowed two people with the same interests to meet and fall in love, and that quality of our relationship is why we are best friends as well as husband and wife.   There is no one else on this planet who I could enjoy a few hours of gaming with, complete with smack talk, and then want to also cuddle up with on the couch and watch a movie.  I love that he can finish all of my cheesy, nerdy pop culture references, that I know what he is talking about when he refers to his SATA cable, and I love the way he looks at me, smiles, and simply says “I LOVE you” when I tell him I want to construct my own Spider Jerusalem glasses.  And yeah, there is probably too much nerdom in this paragraph for many to understand and follow, but trust me when I say “it’s love.”

Also, it’s kinda odd our daughter owes her very existence to a video game.

THE END.

(This entry was originally posted Feb. 18th, 2011.  )

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