When I was a child, I thought my Mama was the most awful parent ever. The woman made me watch "Star Trek." This was absolute mind-bending torture. To lure me into her sci-fi trap, Mama often had Ding Dongs or Twinkies and being the chubby kid I was, I would sit and watch as long as the sweets flowed.

To be perfectly honest, I found myself liking the show. I developed a crush on Chekov and even thought Spock was kind of cute in a logical pointy eared Vulcan kind of way. I even found myself looking forward to the episodes whether Twinkies were present or not.

Then one day, it happened. Someone at school made a snide comment about "Star Trek" - and me, in all my glorious Trekkie-ness came back with a comment that gave away my true hidden fandom. All it took was some comment about knowing that Nurse Chapel was played by Gene Roddenberry's real-life wife and my shields went down.

Like a chubby kid needs anything else to make them the ostracized one in school.

A girl liked science fiction?

I did and I do. I even found a comic book store in Athens where I could visit and feed my need for all things sci-fi. There, I heard about and saw my first photos of a convention.

"Mama, people dress up in costumes like their favorite characters and get together!" I was excited.

Even though the thought of crowds made me nauseous then, I thought it may be fun.

"Oh my," was Mama's reply. "I don't know about that. There may be people dressed like Klingons and we know what Klingons like to do in air vents."

We never were brave enough to go to a convention and I haven't even gotten up the gumption to go to ComicCon but I bet it would be a geeky heaven.

My geekiness wasn't isolated to knowing way more about the final frontier than necessary - there was ‘Star Wars," "The X-Files" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and a few more short lived series I have forgotten - but "Star Trek" held a special place in my heart.

No, I didn't get into "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager" or any of the other spin-offs of "Star Trek." But I could argue about how I preferred Kirstie Alley as "Saavik" in "The Wrath of Khan" versus Robin Curtis in "The Search for Spock;" how I really thought Wesley Crusher was the love child of Jean Luc Picard and Dr. Crusher and how I was oddly fascinated by "Q."

One Saturday morning, I decided to share this love with my child, wondering what his idea about it would be. He already knew about "Star Wars" although I had to properly educate him about the original trilogy. We had already enjoyed "The X-Men" franchise together as I had started him on the movies along with the history from the comics' years ago.

I wasn't sure since there was no characters with adamantium claws or the ability to move things mentally if he would be interested.

I was wrong. So wrong. He dug right into it, seeing the resemblance between Spock and Sheldon from the "Big Bang Theory."

He also noticed Scotty looked an awful lot like Cliff Claven from "Cheers," he just had a different accent.

But he loved it. Every stinkin' dingdang geeky bit of it.

"How do I get my fingers to do that V thing like Spock does?" he asked, trying to force his fingers apart.

I showed him. He still couldn't get it to work.

"Maybe I am not part Vulcan?" he asked.

"Could be," I said.

In the middle of the movie, a commercial for a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" marathon airing the next day came on; I was giddy.

"What's Buffy?" my child asked, growing up in a world full of glittering vamps that walk in slow motion.

"Oh Cole, Buffy rocks. We will watch it tomorrow, OK?"

He smiled, nodding eagerly at another day of getting our geek on.

And in between episodes, we worked on the Vulcan hand salute.

Live long and prosper.

Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author of the recently e-published novel, "The Dahlman Files: A Tony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery."