The Geek vs. The Tight-wad

As I grow older and more encumbered with responsibility (wife, first, then child), I am becoming increasingly paranoid about the state of my finances. It's not like I'm more broke now than I was before. I've got at least the second highest paying job I've held in my life and the least amount of bills (it helps living in a house owned by family that doesn't charge you rent). Still, I get in a panic often about whether or not we have enough cash reserves to handle whatever major purchase may be lurking beyond sight, it's dagger-like claws set to rend the soft leathered flesh of my wallet. You know, car troubles and that sort. However, it is also note-worthy that I am a huge geek. There have been times when walking through the mall, I'll swing by the toy store, for no real purpose than to occupy time, and see something like a giant Lego set for building a large TIE Fighter or the Death Star or the Super Star Destroyer Executor, and I'll think to myself, "...muuuuuuust...haaaaaaaaaave..." much like the undead yearn for the brains of the living. The thing is, dropping $80 or more on a Lego set when I haven't played with Legos in over a decade and a half seems a bit...unnecessary. My resistance for smaller purchases, though, is considerably less. Conceivably, I could nickel and dime myself to death far quicker than I could ever fall prey to some larger purchase of geeky-goodness.

This is where Andria comes in. She's supposed to be the voice of reason for me. When she's feeling the urge to go overboard, then it's my job. Usually she's pretty good at it. I mean, I didn't get the theater release versions of Star Wars on DVD until Christmas!!!

Anyway, last night, we were at Wal-Mart. We'd been out for a while already and it was high time we headed home, since we were out of formula in the diaper bag and Aaron was expressing a growing concern about where his next meal was coming from. Still, Andria was making a final selection on some purchase or other, and I'd already grabbed her movie that we'd come in to pick up (as a show of how much more I love her than my sanity, I bought her Grease on DVD for Christmas...unfortunately, the copy I'd gotten had a bad spot on it and some of the features didn't work...so we returned it and got this new copy), so I swung by the toy department to see if they'd gotten any other Star Wars Galactic Heroes toys that Aaron couldn't live without. They did not.

HOWEVER....they did have the entire run of Marvel Superhero Squad toys. Hoo boy. They seem to lack just a wee bit of the coolness of the Star Wars toys, but, well, that didn't stop me from being excited. I brought Andria over and showed her.

Then a strange thing happened. We walked out with half of the entire set.

There's only one X-Men duo and one Avengers duo that we didn't get (and also the Daredevil/Electra and Punisher/Ghost Rider sets). This leads me to ask one question.

WHAT HAPPENED? Where was the voice of reason? I figured we'd maybe buy two packs, not even three, but most likely only one! With Andria there, I wasn't prepared to let the tight-wad side put up resistance, so there wasn't any at all!

Oh well. The geeking of my son continues. [Insert Maniacal Super-villain Laughter}