Erroneous Nerd Beliefs: And the Winners Are…

?Let me forgo the normal contest results intro nonsense to discuss a very special entry in this weekend’s contest. Namely, this one:

Geekandwife:

My worst nerd belief that would turn out to be wrong, that a website
named “Topless Robot” would not flag my work computers anti porn
software and lead to my termination…. Rob cost me a job.. the least
he could do is send me another shirt…

Fuuuccccckkk. Way to bum me out, Geekandwife. I’ve done enough terrible things in my life that I really don’t need “costing my readers their job” on the goddamn list. Now, I was going to send you another shirt for your woes, but I realized I’d already sent you two of them (one for “geek” and one for “wife,” presumably). So what could I possibly give you to make up for this horrible situation? Then it dawned on me:

I’m going to call your boss.

Seriously. I’ll call him and apologize and explain. I don’t know that it’ll do any good, but it can’t hurt, right? And if all goes well I’ll chronicle it on TR. Sound fair?

Now with that said, please enjoy some of the most entertaining Topless Roboteer stories in recent memory. These stories are often not short, so you might want to get a snack or something. If you can afford it. You know, if I haven’t gotten you fired or anything.

Many HMs of varying size begin… here.

Gene Hoyle:

I was convinced that I was in on the ground floor of the Marvel Universe!

In the late 70’s and early 80’s,Marvel reprinted everything. Amazing Adventures reprinted the early X-men books. Marvels Greatest did Fantastic Four, and Marvel Super Action reprinted Avengers.
I would get most of my books from Don Alvaros, a tobacco/conveinence store that was near my house in Nyack New York. Those were my big books, and I never noticed the newer stuff.

Each issue clearly said (In very small letters) that the books were reprints. I never noticed. One day a house add showed the original X-men standing next to the All New All Different team. It said “If you like the original X-men, you will LOVE the new X-men. I DID NOT like this at all. Little did I know that the change had occured years before.
I eventually went into a real comic store at about age 10 or 11. (M and M comics in Nyack) My mind was blown by what I had to catch up on.

Man, did I feel like a dick.

Adljones:

That girls wouldn’t be put off by my collection of comic books, toys and other assorted nerd clutter, that occupies the shelves in my room.

Keith Callbeck:

I’ll give him the shirt if this wins, but I have a friend who still insists that the first time he saw Star Wars in 1977 the Biggs Darklighter scenes were in the film. I assume he has confused memories of reading the book or something. We still argue about it every time we talk movies.

Ridureyu:

I founded the first American site about the original Japanese series (AKIA/kinnikuman.com). I handed it to someone else in 2002, though, and since then it has morphed into the Little Rubber Guys forum… BUT ANYWAY! I tried to bring as much info about the Japanese series over, since there was zilch stateside, and MUSCLE collectors (and anime fans) wanted to know! So I hooked up with one Japanese speaker, and borrowed/bought the whole run of the original manga. Only problem? I didn’t know Japanese. And my contact was kind of poor with communication (read: he’d send me an occasional sentence of info. Said sentence was very vague). The result was that I got a LOT OF THINGS WRONG.

How wrong?
Thinking that Buffaloman was the main villain of the series (villain for one arc, hero for three), for starters. Or that Satan Cross was a good guy, fighting his evil student. Turns out it was the reverse – he was a villain, fighting his good student. I got character origins wrong, fight outcomes wrong, REASONS for the fights wrong, I thought the Ninja had always been a good guy, I thought Brocken was out to take over the world, I somehow missed the fact that Ramenman was brain-damaged for 3/4 of the series, I thought Neptuneman was a good guy, I thought that Meat fought all the time, I thought Kinnikuman fired energy blasts like Goku…

…Look, let’s just say I screwed up, okay? I eventually got real info and fixed this stuff, but for a while, the only english-language source for info on Kinnikuman GOT EVERYTHING WRONG. EVERYTHING.

I basically misinformed THE ENTIRE FANBASE. Wanna know how bad it was? The Kinnikuman Wiki STILL lists Brockenman as “having aspirations of world domination.” he was just a wrestler. You can read the translated manga online to confirm it. My erroneous nerd beliefs still have ripple effects throughout the entire fandom.

Someguy:

Three nerd errors. One was that I was sure the Zip drive would be around for years and that writing on CDs (they were just burners then) was never going to go anywhere.
The second was that no way that Ghostbuster II movie was going to be like it was. I argued that if they did they would totally alienate we kids who barely remembered the movie but totally loved, “The Real Ghostbusters” cartoon, We brought the franchise such fame and bought tons of their stuff they wouldn’t dare write a movie that eliminates that continuity, right?
The last one was when the story that one of my nerd heroes Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts comic strip had died on the day of his retirement. I heard the story at school and work. I told people that I bet it was a just one of those rumors people like to tell about famous people. You know, worked all those years then first day of retirement he dies. Sounds fake, right? It was kind of sad already, the idea that he died and would never do anything more was too heartbreaking to pretend it could be true.

Ramone:

For about a year after the original Star Wars came out I thought Vader and the Stormies were all robots. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that they were wearing masks. Even with Han and Luke WEARING THEM AS DISGUISES to sneak around the Death Star.

MacGyver:

Back when I was about 5 years old, I thought my uncle was Kurt Russell… I remember watching Big Trouble in Little China and thought the main character in the movie (Played by Kurt Russell) looked far too much like my uncle for it to be a coincidence. Keep in mind, I had no idea who Kurt Russell was, I just thought the guy in the movie looked a whole lot like my uncle. So I therefore decided to myself that this man was indeed my uncle. Imagine my heartbreak when my uncle told me that no, he wasn’t an actor, he drove bulldozers for a living.

LT:

I thought that Metroid was the main character in the Metroid games, and that Zelda was the main character in the Zelda games. Also, I thought that Samus was a male.

Nathan Pease:

The first time I saw Empire Strikes Back I firmly believed the Emperor was Darth Vader’s father.
Of course, later in the movie Vader reveals himself as Luke’s father. My parents swear that as we were walking out of the movie theater I said, “I can’t wait for the next one. Luke is going have a heart attack when he meets his grandpa.”

Ryan:

As a child, I loved turtles… because I loved ninja turtles. Every year or so I would receive a live turtle as a gift. Ninja turles eat pizza, but real turles don’t. (I know now)
I tried, and tried, and tried to feed them pizza every F&^%ing day! Turtles will only pizza is you mush it up.
I know the side effects, now. They stay in their shell up to 24 hours after you feed them, probably related to the explosive diarrhea. Also, it makes them apathetic towards life..and suicidal.
(“Mom, I need a new turtle!”)

Signyphi:

I had never read any of the Lord of the Rings books. I didn’t really even know anything about them. However, I had a best friend who was a HUGE fan, and he bought us tickets to the first show on opening day of the Fellowship of the Rings. The audience was filled with Hardcore fans many dressed in costumes. We were sitting in the back row of the theatre. I really enjoyed the movie. Then, as I’m sure you all know, it ended rather abruptly. As the credits began to roll, the room full of fans were in a collective moment of awed silence. This is when I said, a lot louder then I anticipated “What the F—, they didn’t even destroy the ring.” Everyone in the theatre turned around to stare at me, and my friend turned and pretended to be with the people on the other side of him.

Paulseid:

For years, I thought I understood THAC0. Turns out it was actually a cake mix.

skrag2112:

This one is my brother’s.
When he was a kid, he truly thought that if he threw an icicle in the snow, a Fortress of Solitude would rise up out of the ground. He kept doing this with bigger and bigger icicles until he gave up.

Scott:

#1 My wife grew up firmly believed that Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby were the same person, until recently when she watched an old episode of Hulk and realized that couldn’t be physically possible.

#2 I insisted that the Joker did not actually fall to his death in Tim Burton’s Batman, but that it was a robot of the Joker, as evidenced by the electronic laughing box that short-circuited and turned on when he hit the ground. I was positive that the real Joker was hiding in the stone gargoyle that had the Joker’s hat on it. After all, WHY would they kill the Joker in the first film? I evangelized this to all of my friends and insisted that the Joker was going to come back in the next film.

Spoon07:

I once believed, quite fervently that after Attack of the Clones that I wouldn’t go back to see another Star Wars movie. Hayden Christensen was crap in the role, the romance was bloody creepy and the story didn’t make a damn lick of sense. How many subcontractors do you need to kill one senator?
I argued this point with my brother-in-law (funny how he keeps popping up in my Star Wars themed nerd stories) where basically he said “You’re full of shit. You’ll go.”
To which I responded “Oh, yeah!? I’m so certain that I won’t see it, I’ll give you fifty dollars if I do.”

And two years go by and I am absolutely content in my assertion. I see various promotional images and stuff like that. I am unfazed. I watched the Clone Wars mini episodes and while they are cool I am a rock. I do not care one whit about seeing the third movie.

Then the trailer came out. Now, through most of it I remain committed to my assertions, but then, out of nowhere come the wookiees. And my resolve weakens, because if there’s one group of aliens I have a deep affection for it’s the wookiees. And before the last John Williams stinger in the trailer I feel my resolve break, and the next time I see my brother-in-law I hand him fifty bones and to his credit he didn’t gloat, all he said was:
“The wookiees right?”
So an honest to goodness lifelong vow destroyed by day players in yak hair suits.

Drakonnen:

I was a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, born in 1980. Two of my erroneous nerd beliefs:
1. They were called “life savers” not lightsabers. I think this comes from my mother, who still to this day calls them life savers. So, obviously as I kid I liked Life Savers candy because I thought of Star Wars whenever I saw it.

2. As a kid in the early 80’s I was convinced, CONVINCED, that they had actually made Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, and 3. I’d literally scour the local video stores every time we were there looking for them. Once, I saw Star Wars with a different cover that I hadn’t seen before and I honestly believed I had found the holy grail of my childhood, Episode 1. I got home, extremely excited, put it in the VCR and had my hopes dashed when I realized it was just Episode 4 again… And, like most fans, I of course wish I never did eventually find those episodes.

Googtoyou:

I argued with my husband over whether or not Carter and O’Neill would be boning by the end of SG-1. I was convinced that they would have him retire to remove the problem of him being her superior in the chain of command. His reward for being right still makes me blush.

Daniel Dean:

Thanks to an old cover I saw in Overstreet Price Guide from Marvel Comics, I was under the erroneous belief FOR FIFTEEN YEARS that Doctor Who was a show about werewolves.

Dancore:

I used to believe in eternal love, but Mephisto ruined it for me…

SecurityStooge:

I used to believe that Darth Vader wielded the vast power of the Force and the Empire to woo Leia as he was: In LOVE With Her. I believed this because Alan Dean Foster fucking well said so and wasn’t corrected by George Lucas. This, it seems led me down a path wherein I would rarely be caught off-guard by the sheer sloppiness of Sci-Fi writing ever again and as we saw later, a dark enduring hatred of The Bearded Wonder.

Interlude: I really DID buy every comic that Liefeld drew until about issue 5 of Youngblood where I reached a point of emotional breakdown.

The Yellow Dart:

i used to be convinced that He-Man multi-vitamins existed.
as a little kid, i would always have one of those Flintstones chewable vitamins. and since i loved all things He-Man at the time, i just figured it made sense that he would have a version of those delicious candies… i mean vitamins.

for pretty much a year straight, i would ask my mom to pick up He-Man vitamins when she went to the store, and she would always say she couldn’t find them. i just figured my mom was too dumb to know/care. this is the same woman that brought home Hershey’s chocolate syrup in SUGAR FREE form once, without realizing there’s a difference.

eventually, i gave up and realized i just made the whole thing up. then for my 18th birthday, an artistic friend of mine gave me a birthday present. a bottle of vitamins and he drew the He-Man logo and images on the label. not a great payoff, but that still makes me smile.

OneButtonOff:

First, I have to confess a shame: I didn’t read The Lord of the Rings trilogy until after I watched
the movies. Didn’t know anything about
the story, the characters, the fact that it was The Epic Tale To End All Epic
Tales, yadda, yadda, yadda. There.

Now, for my pathetic nerd belief.
In high school, I used to write stories with a couple of
friends. A kind of fan-fic mash-up with
our own original characters blended in.
It had some elements of fantasy but it was more of a space soap opera
than anything else. Well, one day I had
the bright idea of writing a longer, more (dare I say?) epic story for my
characters. I had one of them find a
ring, a very special ring, which seemed to hold a singular fascination for my
character. But what he didn’t know was
that there was a dark force behind that ring, a force that was looking for it,
desperate to get the ring back. And, (here’s
the kicker…ready?) the ring WANTED to be found. In fact, it was practically calling out to the dark force, helping
its minions track it down. I was so proud of my totally original, amazingly creative idea that I couldn’t wait to show my friends…

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I truly believed that I had
invented The One Ring.

SecurityStooge:

I believed I, and only I was subtle enough of mind and thought to notice the imperceptible hints being dropped that pointed to Racer X being Speed Racer’s elder brother, Rex.
Upon seeing the series a bit later, I was firstly horrified by how crappy my beloved Speed Racer was as a cartoon. (This, coupled with a near simultaneous rewatch of the Star Wars Trilogy led me to understand that as a child I was truly VERY easy to entertain) And secondly, I noticed that the hints they were quietly dropping in front of us regarding Racer X’s Identity more closely resembled the subtlety of dropping anvils upon our toes.

ExecutorElassus:

When I was in pre-school, I was convinced I could build a time machine out of old television parts. I collected all the old tubes and shit from people’s trash we walked past on our daily walks with the preschool. All I got was dirty and bitter.

More HMs, more hilariously wrong nerd beliefs, and the winners, all on the next page.

—-

Longbowhunter:

As a kid I was a huge fan of all things nerdy,including the ROCKY movies. When Rocky 4 came out,I honestly thought that Ivan Drago was a cyborg….I knew NOTHING about steroids or sports medicine,and just assumed that due to the fact he was always hooked up to machines and computers and shit and the fact that everyone in the movie kept saying “he’s not human,he’s a machine” that he was,in fact,a robot. I mean c’mon…he killed Apollo Creed. Plus he was Russian-as a kid growing up in the cold war,NOTHING was beyond belief when it came to the Russians…not even cyborg boxers. I always thought it was rather odd that the ROCKY series took such a sci-fi turn,but I was pleased nonetheless. For years I used to talk about that movie by mentioning it as the one where Rocky fought a robot….I didnt realize how stupid I sounded until I was well into my 20’s and the internet informed me that Ivan Drago was all too human. Still-I kind of prefer my version.

Boredlizzie:

When my mother read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
to me, I thought that Turkish Delight must be mouth watering, chocolate covered
possibly containing peanut butter or caramel deliciousness. Years later I
discovered that Turkish Delight is, in fact, a dried up cube of jelly
containing nuts, all covered with powdered sugar. Gross. Also, Jesus was never a lion
and not all tall women are evil sorceresses.

Alice_down_the_rabbithole:

Until I was 10, I wholeheartedly believed that the Ninja Turtles lived in the sewers of my town and would wave to me if I looked down at the drains at just the right moment. I spent most of my childhood staring down while walking to school often resulting in me running into things. The day I finally gave up on Donatello asking me to join them for pizza was like if Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny gassed themselves in a car with the Tooth Fairy :(.

Mittens:

I genuinely believed until I was 10 that pirates buried treasure on Chambers Island.

To explain: My dad is a huge history geek, and once or twice every year we would go and visit this fishing/beach island called Chambers Island (known to my younger brother and I as ‘Treasure Island’). Our parents convinced us that pirates had buried treasure under X’s buried in the sand, so every year armed with a plastic shovel and bucket we would dig up every X we could find in the hopes of finding buried treasure. Unbeknown to us, he would sneak out the night before and bury two large bottles of ‘treasure’ (usually a necklace or a pirate flag or that sort of a thing) under X’s in the sand.

My dad maintains that one of his proudest moments as a parent was one year when a bunch of kids were mocking my brother and I for digging under all these X’s in the sand, and then immediately changing tact and following us around everywhere as soon as we found the treasure like we were some kinds of treasure finding gods.

When I was ten, my dad casually broke the news to me and my 8 year old brother, thinking that we’d figured him out and we’d grown out of it. We were horrified and devastated and almost in tears. I think my dad’s response was something like ‘Damn, we could have gotten a few more years out of Treasure Island.’

Fanboy:

I am doing this on behalf of a friend who is constantly wrong on nerdy matters, since the memory is still so fresh in my mind. Two nights ago he and I were driving to a friends house, and talking about Ghostbusters. Somehow it came out that he believed Stay Puft Marshmallows had been a real product when the movie came out. I knew that the product had been fictional until very, very recently, but he refused to hear it, telling me his mom had enjoyed them as a child, and that I was wrong. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it (as I said, he was wrong pretty frequently), but this time he was being absolutely obnoxious, screaming “YOU. ARE. WRONG.” in my face repeatedly. I was pretty taken aback. Could I have been wrong? He was so sure of himself! A quick trick to Wikipedia confirmed his mistaken belief was just that. I wish I could say I was the bigger man and didn’t immediately rub it in his face with the same obnoxious energy that had driven me to prove him wrong.

I wish I could say that, but of course I can’t.

Midwest_Avenger:

-I was only 11 when the Star Wars movies were re-released in 1997, but when I saw a New Hope for the first time I totally thought Porkins crashed because he was too fat. No one, ever told me I was wrong, or provided evidence to the contrary. It wasn’t until glorious Wikipedia in college that someone told me he was shot down by a turbolaser. In my elementary school days it made perfect sense a fat man in zero gravity space could be too heavy.

Googtoyou:

At 13 I believed that Captain Picard was a descendent of Captain Kirk and one of Mudds women.

Thepariaheffect:

When I was a young, young lad, I assumed that once numbers hit a certain point, they rolled over and started again. Why? Because that’s what happened when you hit your maximum amount of coins in Super Mario Bros. Thank goodness I got over that before I started school.

Ladyd:

When I first read The Princess Bride, I honestly believed that it was an abridged “good parts” version of S. Morgenstern’s classic. In fact, I think I was somewhat annoyed that I’d gotten stuck with an abridged copy of the book, although I never went to far as to search for the full text.

Half a dozen years later, the book comes up in conversation and I admit to my theater group that I’ve only read the abridged version. I still blush to think of it.

Gen. Panic:

I once was having a discussion with two friends about the various power-up suits from Super Mario Brothers 3. Friend #1 (Lazaro) was arguing that the suit featured on the cover of the game that gave you flying powers was a bear suit. He was arguing against myself and friend #2 (Mike), as we held the position that the said suit / power-up was, in fact, a raccoon suit.

The discussion was going back and forth with myself and Mike conceding the point that while we believed that there was a bear suit in the game, the one that grants you flying powers and is featured on the cover is not a bear suit. The discussion became so frustrating for Mike that he made the following statement:
“It HAS to be a raccoon suit because you flap your tail and fly, just like real raccoons.”

I can’t remember what Lazaro or Mike was doing immediately after because I was on the ground unable to stop myself from drooling, I was laughing so hard. Lazaro also spent several minutes having to hold himself up while pretending to be a flying raccoon and dancing around the room imitating what he imagined a flying raccoon would look like. I had thought he was employing some obscure rhetorical device to convince Lazaro of the absurdity of his position. I feel guilty about this to this day as while we were laughing, he stood there entirely dumbstruck as he could not comprehend what we were laughing about.

Lazaro and I, as well as other friends, have mocked Mike over the years about this stance. This was in the days of AOL IM and his buddy icon had a habit of mysteriously changing to Mario in the raccoon costume. As another example, the three of us were driving together and Mike threw a softball across the plate to Barry Bonds on the Venom serum by saying in front of Lazaro, “Is that a raccoon on the side of the road?” Lazaro responded by looking at me and casually saying, “Yeah, it must have crash landed”.

The Amazing Rando:

When I was Fifteen, I believed, I was the biggest Nerd in the family. It was two years before my brother opened his shop, and six months before I met Jamie. Until that day I was the biggest nerd in the family, I was proven wrong, by my SIX YEAR OLD sister, LeaRon. She was a Scifi nerd, entirely because of me, LeaRon loved Blade Runner and Star Trek, but her true love was with the Harrison Ford movie “The Road Warrior”. She had finally saw the final movie in the trilogy “Beyond Thunderdome” and she was so happy, she learned the entire movie word for word, and would hold mini reenactments of her favorite scenes, usually she kept her nerd habits in the closet. She was like me, afraid of the stereotypes of nerds, and she tried to keep from embarrassing herself or one of the family members, but for some reason she just had to take advantage of her obsession, and the fact that I was built like a tank from football. LeaRon loved to ride on my back, and I don’t know what inspired her to do it, but in the middle of a very busy, and very full, mall she just started yelling, “Who run Bartertown, I run Bartertown!”
I couldn’t stop her! She would tell random strangers,”I’m Master, he Blaster, and I run Bartertown!”

I was embarrassed beyond belief, but as we walked through the mall, she kept on screaming the lines from the movie, and it was in that moment that I realized, she was perfectly all right with being a nerd, and didn’t care what people thought of her. My six year old sister was more honest with herself than me, and I actually felt ashamed of myself, for it. I made up for it in the end, because I made her an incredible Master-Blaster costume for Halloween, a costume she still remembers some ten years later as the best costume she ever wore. LeaRon’s behavior that day, ultimately lead to me actually coming out as the huge nerd I really was, but it will always stand that it was because of her that I became the nerd you guys know as The Amazing Rando.

That’s how I learned I wasn’t the biggest nerd in the family, it was actually my sister LeaRon.

Tiptoe_through_the_Tulips:

When I was five we watched The Wizard of Oz in class and as Dorothy arrived in Munchkinland one of the children asked why the initial scenes were shot in sepia tone, our teacher confidently replied that colored film had been invented midway through production. I probably believed this for over ten years.

Raven Tidwell:

I was at one point so convinced that Ben Reilly was still alive, I edited his Wikipedia page to change his status from “Deceased” to “Active”. In my defense, I was twelve, and roughly ten years behind on what were current comics at the time.

Also, I once thought Vengeance was cooler than Ghost Rider. I have no defense for that. i should have known better, even at 13.

kaitune:

As a wee child, I sincerely and wrongly believed that comics are just for kids. Even though I happened to come across some comics of questionable plots ( such as one that a 10 years old girl is proposed by her own teacher who she is also in love with, or one that could be best summarized by my current self as a lesbian fairy-tale on LSD), I would choose not to think too much about it and even think that the all the presented subject matters are acceptable in some ways…plainly because my parents told me that comics are for kids, so they must be suitable stories and MY MOM AND DAD WILL NEVER LIE.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t until a few years later when I learnt to know better and finally understand why a hell load of people (whom I fondly describe the plots of my favorite comics to) were rather creep out by my little nerdy self.

TWM:

When I was younger I saw the batman with Eartha Kitt and I was so excited that catwoman was black. After that I wanted to go to the comic book store and get some catwoman comics, and she was white in all the comics! And I was sooo upset and I asked the clerk why did they make catwoman white when shes suppose to be black and I threw a fit because she was suppose to be black to me. I was like 11 or something and I was telling off this much older, much more comic read guy that he’s wrong and to give me the ‘black catwoman’ comics he’s probably hiding in the back. I went to several other stores looking for them and finally one guy really yelled back at me that if I wanted a black female hero then to read storm cause thats all there is.

I made a totally ass of myself looking back on it… but I’m still hoping for a black catwoman as long as its not like hallie berry influenced or anything. And that shes not a stripper, prostitute or something like that.

Now, despite the thousands of words worth of HMs you just read, I have an exta special mention (I’m not calling it an “extra-honorable” for reasons which should be clear in just a second)…

LamarRevenger:

I thought Youngblood #1 was the best comic ever. So I posed with it for my senior picture.

HOLY SHIT. Dear LamarRevenger: If you send me this picture, I will send you a shirt. Fair? Now for the winners proper:

JesseDeath:

I am NOT a James Bond guy. At all. And until this bet (ah, a time before pocket Internet) I didn’t even know of Dr. Who’s existence. I had just watched a few classic Bonds for the first time, Moon Raker, Goldfinger, Dr. No and a few others. A little while later someone starts talking about Dr. WHO. Talking about police boxes and sonic screw drivers and all sorts of timey wimey things and I, having seen the movies once and knowing all there is to know about everything (as teens are wont to do; really I didn’t even know the TITLE), I got into this argument saying he didn’t know WTF he was talking about, that it was Dr. No, not Who, about spies not time travel and placed a bet. His wager: a replica lightsaber (before force fx made good ones aplenty) my wager? My pride and joy at the time: a supposedly film used (or flawless fake) and I shit you not: Robin’s chest armour. Like, of Batman and Robin. With nipples. I wish I was kidding. I got a god damn summer job JUST to buy that fucking expensive embarrassment. Not sure who REALLY won that bet, as he ended up with it. No one I know now knows I had that. And I won’t tell them. So two entries: a fucked, moronic, nerd-belligerent bet about two CLASSIC properties, and the fact that I, at one point in my youth, thought that Schumacher directed the FUCK out of that Batman movie. Enough to warrant that couple thousand dollar piece of shame.

I love every bit about this story. The immediate, pervading assumption that Dr. No and Doctor Who are the same thing, the vehement bet, and most of all, the prize. Honestly, JesseDeath, I’m not sure if I’m giving you the shirt because you believed Doctor Who didn’t really exist or because you believed a replica of Robin’s armor from Batman and Robin was once worth owning, but either way, congrats. But if you want what is hands down the most outstanding insane belief in the entire contest, read on…

? Kelley S.:

I live near Rochester in New York, home of a certain company called Kodak. My grandmother has worked for Kodak since the 60s. When i was around 7 or 8 years old, she took me to the original kodak building, where she worked, and gave me a tour. Now, part of this building had a dark room and all of the chemicals for developing photographs. they also had a several large buckets into which they would dump the excess chemicals at the end of the day. I asked what it was and she replied “oh, that’s just the toxic waste from the developing chemicals”… you see where this is going? no? well, then i guess I’ll tell you.

In my little kid mind–which had been heavily influenced by a family that loved science fiction, fantasy, and most importantly, anything superhero, I knew that toxic waste was one of the things that caused super powers, along with radioactive spider bites, being born on planet Krypton, and being rediculously wealthy(wait, that is a super power). So, for the rest of the tour, my mind was focused on those buckets of “toxic waste”. My imagination filled itself with the possibility of becoming a photography-themed crime-fighter.

I would be called Photographia (it was pretty good for a 7 year old, okay?!) and my super power would be the ability to trap criminals within cheesey photos meant for holiday cards, and those uncomfortable reunion photos, where you were made to get your picture taken with that rarely-seen uncle who stands too close and breathes funny. I had decided that my grown-up secret identity wold be as a simple office worker for Kodak, while at night i would defend the city of Rochester from crime! I was even making some mental preliminary designs for a photography-themed costume (which involved a cape made of photographs). I had it all planned out, man!

Needless to say, I was disappointed when we didn’t go back that day.
By the next weekend, however, I was able to convince my grandmother to take me back for another tour. By then, I had a plan on how to get to the waste.

We got to the building, and she began with the offices. As boring as that part was, I was preoccupied with my plan enough to hold out. We made it to the darkroom–and the “vats” of toxic waste (because waste should always come in a vat, toxic or otherwise)– and I knew i had to act. Just as my grandmother was leaving the room, I sprang into action.

I ducked under the railing that tourists were supposed to stay behind and dove for the buckets. This was it. I was finally going to do it. I would finally have superpowers and fight crime. I had prepared for this moment all week. I was ready.

What i wasn’t ready for, however, was the employee who was working in the darkroom that day to grab me around the waist, and ask me what the hell i thought i was doing. My grandmother noticed, and immediately grabbed me by the arm and took me home. My parents made me explain my clever (in my mind, anyway) plan, and after hearing it, had a LONG talk with me about what was real and what wasn’t. For the next year or two, I thought my parents had just been trying to decieve me so that they wouldn’t have to worry about the dangerous life I’d have to live as a super hero.

I was embarrassed. I was ashamed. But mostly, I held a deep sense of faliure. I had missed my chance, and now i’d probably never be a super hero.
And the city would have no protector…

Sure, the belief that a quick soak in toxic waste would give you superpowers is adorable, but it’s the elaborate plan to dunk herself in toxic waste that entertained me so much. And Kelley’s other two erroneous beliefs were also adorably nerdy, and I would have included them here except her first entry was the length of War and Peace.

Congrats to the winners, thanks to everyone who entered, and LamarRevenger you get me that photo — and Geekandwife, you get me your boss’s contact info. And you guys, be sure to stop by this weekend, because I have a pretty damned good contest idea in mind…