Wow... Well, That was pretty fucking personal, now wasn't it?

[wolven7]

slackmistress has a new post over at AntSocial Networking: 'Coming Out of the Comic Book Closet: When did you realize you were a Geek?' She writes:

'. . .I didn't realize I was a full-blown nerd until the 7th grade. . .

'I think it was Britten Trimmer, although it was nearly 25 (urp!) years ago so I could be wrong. Britten saw that each quarter I read progressively more books...first 11, then 13, then 16.

'I bet you can't read 50 books, he told me.

'Let's make it interesting, I responded.

'Okay, I didn't say let's make it interesting like some pubescent Fast Eddie with a bad perm, thick 80's eyebrows and and frosted lip gloss, but we did place the wager of a dollar. One whole dollar.

'I set about my task, which to be honest, wasn't all that difficult. It ended up being about four books a week, which was easily manageable. Each Friday, I'd write up my notecards and file them in the box under my name. As the weeks progressed, the box grew more and more stuffed until Mrs. Bogen finally gave me my own separate file.

'I read 53 books that quarter.

'As Britten admitted defeat and handed me my dollar, I basked in victory, and in the adoration of my peers. That's why they were staring at me, right?

'I looked at the chalkboard.

'A = 26-53 books
B= 11-25 books

'I blew the curve. For a dollar.

That's when I realized I was, without a doubt, a geek.

Now it's time for your coming-out stories!'

So I figured, why the fuck not, right? Let's be proud of what makes us who we are. Bits of me, after the cut. Wow. That's almost clever.

When I was eight, i created chemical solutions with my best friends that ate through metal and turned into Super Rust solids, and we were convinced that we could sell the idea to the military .

While sitting in math class, staring at the back of my chair (you know, the ones with the blue shiny enamel and the shiny silver rivets), I saw the reflection of reflections, curved around infinity, and I knew that there had to be other realities, in each one of those, where something was just a little different.

I designed a grappling hook glove.

We wrote a MegaMan screen play, in third grade.

I drew and created comics with my best friends, in school, and over the summer in programs Sponsored by the school.

I've always read comics. I've always loved science and art and books and had an appreciation for math, even after I was no good at it.

There was no "coming out," for me. I was so immersed in a culture of people for whom this was the Spice, which was the life, which MUST FLOW that it never occurred to me, that people would be any different, anywhere; that having these interests could ever be a bad thing.

Then I got to Georgia, seventh grade. Different values. Different people. Different groups. Completely different dynamics. Terrible. Detached. Scary things... I actually left, and went back to DC, because of it. I came back, though, and eighth-tenth grades were more of the same from seventh, though I coped, better. For the most part. Not really, at all, actually. They were pretty terrible years.

But then I got to my high school, the one I count as truly mine, and I knew that it was still okay. That there were more people who loved geeky and nerdy things, and that I was happiest, with them. What's more? They were cool. Cooler than any of the people in middle school, or the other HS. They knew things I didn't and listened to me when I knew what they didn't.

That school shaped the perspective lens through which I view every situation and everything I would encounter and become, over the next nine years.

So, really, it wasn't exactly a coming out. It was more like coming home.

And that's my story...

There you are then. A bit more about me.

You should be reading and participating in the awesome that is AntiSocial Networking.

Ta.

Comments

[razelore.livejournal.com]

That's easy for me. When I was a small child and my brother and I got in trouble my mother would make him read, she would take my books away...

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That is AWESOME. I love to see a parent who knows her children. :)

[razelore.livejournal.com]

Heh, there are lots of reasons I'm a geek, but that's always the first one that comes to mind.

I also remember analyzing which Transformers had the easiest transforming method so I could emulate them on the playground. I finally decided on Bumblebee, but it's really hard to pretend you have wheels when yer curled in a ball on the ground:)

Yeah, my mom still knows me really well, she's been pushing me to go to library school since I was in high school and I finally decided she was right and I need to do it.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Best of luck, in it, too.

[razelore.livejournal.com]

Thanks, though I'm still in the writing applications stage right now.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I know how that goes. Still. Best of luck.

[techiecl.livejournal.com]

After moving to GA, in the fifth grade. One of my classmates saw me read Red Storm rising.

"You're reading that entire book?!"

"Yeah, I felt like reading it again." I gave him the idiot look then he pointed at me and shouted annouced to the class what book I was reading and people looked or came over to examine it as if I brought a snake to show and tell.

[techiecl.livejournal.com]

totally reposting that to Anti-Social. I've added to my list of regular blogs thanks to you.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to hear that. She's a really awesome writer.

[plantyhamchuk.livejournal.com]

It wasn't until my mid 20's that I recognized that people liked to classify me as such, even though they'd probably been telling me that for years. Now as for being "weird" - that was firmly established by 4th grade. Although meowing at the teachers in 1st grade might've been a dead giveaway.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

That might have, in fact. :)

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

I think it wasn't when I was excited about being allowed in the big-kids' books in the school library, or the adults' in the township one, but realizing that no one else I knew was quite so excited about the prospect, and also that my bringing home five or six books every week or two, and finishing them mostly in time for the next visit, was freakish to them.

I read most of Cosmos when I was eight or nine, and everything I could find by Stephen King by the time I was ten. Cabal, by Clive Barker was my favourite book early enough that I had no idea what a cock was, other than a bird, and the sex scenes merely puzzled me as I had no context yet.

And I pretended I was a bird. A Lot. I hooted through music class once, and got yelled at for it.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

I wish I had read Cosmos, that early. Might have stayed up on my science and math.

But then where would I be?

[paosparti.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure when it was for me. I spent a lot of my Childhood thinking I was dumb because my brother learned to read at age 3 and I wasn't able to pick up the habit until I was 7.5.

I went to Blackstock Montessori from 2.5 to 9 or so. And I was around such a different type of social norm that I didn't stand out for reasons of "nerdiness" Looking back on it I was by far not the most nerdy kid at Blackstock, but I probably wasn't the least either. Though somehow (and I truly still haven't figured out why or how) I because the outsider kid who was picked on insesently and came home crying from school everyday.

So after that I switched over to public school and started in the 5th grade. I think here is where I started to really stand out. By the end of the year I was nicknamed "The Human Encyclopedia" by my friends. Whenever we had trivia contests in class I always had people begging me to be on their team. I spent most of my playground, or walking down the hall time with my nose stuck in a book. In fact I was reprimanded for not playing during playtime, and continually asked "how do you walk like that?"

6th grade was much the same. The story from then was that I had to write this presentation on a book. The book was a Lucy Maud Montgomery book, nothing terribly beyond my years or anything, But I remember writing the presentation in less than 10 minutes, and mostly just fussing over the costume to wear. When I gave my presentation the following day my teacher was so impressed pulled me out of each of my other classes throughout the day so I could come back and give my presentation for every period.

Though probably my geekiest moment of all was in Seventh grade we got to choose any book we liked for a book report and I remember reading 2001: Space Odyssey, which totally changed my perspective on a lot of things and it wasn't for quite some time that I realized that Not every 7th grader would have chosen that book.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

You should post that, on her site.

[paosparti.livejournal.com]

really?

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yes.