I was sitting in class the other day, sprawled across the chair, when I happened to get a glimpse of what I was wearing. I had on a PS2-controller-MLB-logo shirt courtesy of Gameskins, a Ninja Gaiden wristband, and my keys were dangling out of my pocket on a Nintendo lanyard. My Aggressive Inline bike messenger bag had both a GBA SP and an N-gage inside of it; there was my NES controller wallet and no fewer than ten games stuffed in the front pocket. Peeking out of my backpack was a Gamestop (spot...stop...spot) bag with Fable inside. On the desk was my Nokia water bottle.

Talk about wearing your politics on your sleeve.

Almost everything I own screams video-game-aholic. From my wardrobe, to the stickers, to the magazine cutouts that I have plastered on everything, to every single piece of pre-order kitsch that has come out in the past five years. If you don't know that I am a video game fan within the first four seconds of looking at me, you must not know what a video game is.

Males 13-30, look at me knowingly. They have that "hey, I know what game you were playing last night" twinkle in their eye. Twenty-something college chicks just love to watch me play the SP. "Oh my god! What is that? It is sooooo cute!" (Men, take heed) It's like video gamers have their own universal fraternity/sorority, only it's not horribly cliquish and the only requirements for getting in is that you must be a huge geek and want other people to know it. When I see someone wearing video game apparel, I feel instantly connected to them. We have something in common, and it means a lot more than three arbitrary Greek letters.

Although I'm usually quite opposed to the notion of sororities in the first place, if I could join one where we all hung around, played sixteen player Halo, dressed up in each other's Soul Calibur t-shirts, did our makeup like Lulu, and didn't try to steal each other's boyfriends, well that wouldn't be so bad.