Twice in the past week I have been called a "geek" by superiors at work. I'm sure each of the men (yes, it was two different men) who said this to me meant it in an endearing way ("Oh, Brooke, you're such a geek. How adorable!"), but it got me thinking. I am a geek--a straight-up, straight-A, straight-laced geek.And I'm not offended by this notion. First of all, I'm self-aware enough to know that even though I may harbor some geek-like sensibilities, I have never owned a pocket protector, I don't snort when I laugh (often), and I've never had any desire to learn Klingon (though I once had the desire to learn Welsh, as evident by past posts). I also know that I don't wear my glasses because I think they're sexy; they're just easier on my eyes.
In the past few weeks, I've had ample time to reflect on my geekiness. A few months ago, my boyfriend and I were hanging out with a couple of my girlfriends who were actively and eagerly discussing the upcoming release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the film). I, naturally, was also thoroughly engaged in this conversation, and I had more than a few words to say on the subject. ("I really never liked the whole Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley thing. Am I the only person who feels this plot line was just sloppily contrived?") Several hours later, after the conversation had waned and my friends had gone home, my ever-patient and mild-mannered boyfriend said, "So, those are your friends, huh? You guys are a bunch of nerds."
Thanks, sweetie. I'll consider that your version of a term of endearment.
A few weeks later, I went to Nashville for a week to visit the city I'd lived in for ten years as well as some old friends I hadn't seen since I moved away. I stayed with my friend Jana--one of my best friends since the sixth grade--and at one point, we began discussing high school.
A side note, if you will. My experience in high school was very similar to my experience visiting the Museum of Sex for the first time: it's fine while you're there, but once you leave, you never feel the need to do it again. I definitely was a nerd in high school--straight-A, AP, Honors student, valedictorian of my class, member of the drama club and the speech and debate team, and, to top it off, one of the lead violins in our school orchestra (as it happens, Jana was the other lead).
This was my existence in high school; it was all I knew. But that was perfectly fine because it was all my friends knew too. Our typical Friday nights consisted of a small group of us getting together for cheap Mexican food at Las Palmas (a place I visited a total of three times during my recent visit), a trip to the Starbucks across the street for a Frappucino and some girl talk (though occasionally our friend Tien, who also happened to be my junior prom date, attended), and occasionally, a late-night trip to Walgreens where we once bought a three-pack of condoms just for shits and giggles. (I ended up unwrapping one and placing it conspicuously in our bathroom trashcan so my mom would see it and think the worst. Of course, she knew me well enough to know that I was not getting laid and actually thought it was hilarious.)
I've heard urban legends about how kids nowadays get together and have "rainbow" parties (a concept that, I must say, I desperately hope is a mere myth) and have drunk sex with one another. I'm sure this happens somewhere, and I'm sure plenty of kids in my high school got together on weekends, drank, smoke, and copulated, but, as Jana and I both noted during our recent conversation, this lifestyle was completely foreign to us. In fact, it wasn't until I got to college and actually met people who had already lost their virginity that it dawned on me that, perhaps, my high school classmates had done just the same. I didn't have my first kiss until my senior year of high school. It had never even occurred to me that thousands of 17-year-olds had already "done it"--for realsies.
Sleepovers were particularly fun for my friends and me. In the eighth grade, my friend Stacy had a birthday party where the tradition of the traveling story was born. We had recently been given an in-class assignment where each person started a story and then passed it to the person who sat behind them. That person would add a few sentences and then pass it further down the row until it had reached the hands of about five or six people. The result was a full-blown nonsensical story that some students were asked to share. (I have vague memories of one involving a cheese man.) I found this whole thing fascinating.
So, I suggested we try it out at the party. We each took sheets of paper and developed some rules. Each person would start their own story and pass it to the next person. After every person had written something in each story, the person who started the story had to read it out loud to everyone. Just imagine what you might have to say!
For some reason, this caught on like wildfire among my friends and me, and we continued doing it at basically every sleepover until we graduated high school. As time went on, the stories got more and more raunchy, and my friends would often describe PG-13 sexual scenarios between one of the members of our group and some unsuspecting male peer whom we all pretended to hate but secretly had a crush on. The entire process could take hours depending on how many people were participating. At my 15th birthday party, about seven friends and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning churning out stories, one of which generated the classic line, "There's always the horse." Trust me, it was funny in context.
If this wasn't geeky enough, I still have about 80 of those traveling stories stored in a Trapper Keeper somewhere. They really are timeless, let me tell you, though I have to say that all of those hours of free-writing gave me the preparation I needed to start this blog, which, I hope is a bit more articulate. You should consider yourselves so lucky.
My geekiness did not leave me upon entering college, mostly because I ended up attracting more geeks into my inner circle. My freshman year roommate watched so many Law and Order and Star Trek re-runs that, for a while, I thought she must be majoring in it. One of my closest friends initiated conversation with my roommate and me after he walked past our dorm room and heard that we were watching Lord of the Rings (my roommate had a Tolkien poster on her closet door and a shirt that said "I went to Middle Earth and all I got was this ring"--or something along those lines). My other best friend throughout college made the two following comments at different points during our freshman year: "The Economist is my favorite magazine" and "I want Tim Russert's job." Some of my favorite pastimes from college are lip synching to "Goodbye Horses" (the song in Silence of the Lambs that the serial killer sings to when he's dressing up in his skin costume) and doing an interpretive dance to "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie at a campus bar. My senior year, I hosted a Golden Girls party, and the summer after graduation, my two friends and I made fake wands out of sticks and glitter and went to the midnight release party of Harry Potter and the Dealthy Hallows (see picture above).
Part of me wonders what it would've been like to have lived the more rambunctious teenage experience. Most of my peers who did turned out just fine and don't nurse any drug habits or venereal diseases that I'm aware of. But, to be honest, if that meant I would have to give up my life as a geek, I would say "No thanks," and go back to watching my DVDs of Quantum Leap (I own all five seasons!).
Eventually, no matter how tame our youth, we meet the real world where we all have to take the same responsibilities and suffer the same hardships as everyone else. We realize that our world isn't the only one out there and that loyalty is much more rare than it was in high school. Soon enough, we become disillusioned by the world (hopefully not completely) and we need copious amounts of caffeine to help us wake up in the morning. Knowing this, I see nothing wrong with occasionally escaping into a bubble where you get excited about things like a new book coming out or taking your weekly trip to Las Palmas with the same three girls you saw earlier that day. I hope that the day I stop deriving joy from these things is the day I die. Long live the geeks of the world, and God bless.
