My brother plays Settlers of Catan? Why I'm a little shocked.

I think my brother is letting his inner nerd out more often. It might be because he's now at a school where you can be smart and cool at the same time, not just a party school. But he's always had it in him, it's just nice to see it come out again. He was actually the one to first get into video games. Our aunt had received a SNES from her boyfriend (now husband) and wasn't into it, so passed it on to my family. From age two my brother would play Super Mario World for HOURS. From then all the way through highschool he was a huge video game fan. Nintendo has been our roots, and my brother was the one to completely embrace that. He was a serious Mario and Zelda fan. At the same time he was ridiculously into SimCity on the console, which possibly harbored his love of urban planning. Actually, that combined with of living down the street from a famous architect's home and studio are probably the reasons he even considered that line of work, when of course he's not laying down some ridiculously entrancing beats as a DJ. In college he still did play, more toward the Xbox, but he is not the hugest fan. He still plays the Civilization series like a mofo though. Not many other nerd pursuits, at least that I knew he did. Until today.

 His nerd cred has just recently grown. It was his idea this year to go to Medieval Times for his birthday. I don't know why, he just decided he was going. Fortunately, I live near it so it's easy to coordinate. I call him today to let him know I got the tickets and how we'll meet up and he mentions he's waiting to catch up with a friend so they can play Settlers of Catan. 

I was kind of taken aback. Settlers of Catan, if you haven't played it, is a nerd staple in the board game world. You establish rival towns and cities with your fellow players, managing resources and essentially making your country the best country ever. It can take hours with strategic people but is something that's really fun. My core nerd friends in college played it a lot.

So to hear my brother, who has kind've been the cooler of the two of us since high school, is actually anticipating to play this ridiculously nerdy game. I knew there was a bit of a geek in there for the longest time, but it's kind of nice to know that I'm not the only geeky sibling. Sure, my parents can be huge dorks, but different generations geek out to different things.

My brother was surprised that I was surprised. He just assumed that since he was a fan of Civilization that it was a given he'd love Settlers of Catan. Maybe that's on me, but I don't think I could assume he'd hang around with the kind of people who'd love to introduce that kind of board game to him.

At least this makes his birthday gift shopping easy. I'm getting him a board game of his own.