I was a geek…
I wrote this for a contest at my old blog and wanted to re-share it
There wasn’t much hope in me being anything other than a geek when I learned to read at the age of four. I didn’t have a lot of friends my own age and spent way too much time with adults until I started school. As a result I had a fairly large vocabulary for a five year old by the time I hit kindergarden and had been reading simple books to myself for awhile. The books kept me company and kept me out of my mother’s hair in a way that toys and dolls did not. I always saw Barbie as a group activity while my mom tried in vain to explain to me I could totally play Barbie by myself. Reading though was a perfect way to spend time solo.
Fast forward to the first grade. I got put into a first/second combo class because they had already figured out I was a fast learnin’ kid or something. When they tested us for reading groups, it turned out that the entire first grade reading program was too simple for me so they shoved me in with some of the second graders in my class. I was so excited when I got my first reading book that I took it home when i wasn’t supposed to and read the whole thing. Whoops.
That year I also came down with some weird skin disorder and was out of class for about three weeks. I had my homework brought to me at home and without all the other kids to slow me down I finished it in about a week and spent the rest of the time I was off at Grandma’s being sick watching cartoons and reading books. When I got back to class and was well, I found out that I had worked too far ahead and the class was just getting to some of the lessons I’d already done at home and I CRIED about it in class because this was the first time I’d ever felt different.
It obviously wouldn’t be the last.
The summer before 5th grade was probably a watermark in grammer school geekiness for a few reasons.
1-I WILLINGLY went to summer school. Not to train for cheerleading or flag team like my best friend at the time, but because I wanted to be first chair in concert band that next year so I wanted to get a head start learning my brand new (used) clarinet.
2-Did you just catch the part where I played THE EFFING CLARINET? WILLINGLY? AND THEN LATER THE FRIGGIN OBOE? Because yeah.
3-During this summer school debacle I had a Language Arts class where we learned such exciting things as how to write a five paragraph essay! and for some reason we prepared a Texas Sheet Cake as part of that. The other major part of the class was reading in book groups. I got put into a group reading a Judy Blume book, which was supposed to take me the entire six weeks to read.
Judy Blume is awesome and all but SIX WEEKS to read “Iggy’s House?” You have got to be kidding me. I polished that off and turned my report in, in about three days. The girls in my group were mad at me for making them look like slow readers and sort of stopped talking to me, even though I never let a spoiler go in any of our meetings. My teacher started handing me harder books but by the end of the six weeks I think I did about 10 book reports. Whoops.
This has been a constant my entire life. My boyfriend now can’t even believe how I devour books.
Add to this the 10 years I played in Marching or Concert Band and the time I spent as a Editor in Chief on my high school paper and a page editor in college and most people would picture me with big frizzy hair and a pair of glasses.
I’m still an uber geek now even though I’m a radio station Program Director. Now I just nerd out on radio, music and the internet and I am currently in charge of running about 8 myspace pages for various things at the radio station, bands and myself. I also over see our station website.
I’m socially awakward even though I talk for a living. I still get great joy out of finding out that people who were mean to me because I was a nerd growing up are doing less than stellar. Sometimes I feel like my emotional maturity when dealing with peers hasn’t progressed past my awakward and unspoken about junior high days.
Luckily for me, the radio biz is full of misfits like myself so finally after almost 30 years on the planet I sort of feel like I fit in. Sort of.
