Confessions of a Nerd

Hi, my name is Tina and I am a nerd.

I have been a nerd as long as I can remember.  I've always been a bit eccentric and off in my own world.  The first book that I ever wanted to read, when I was five, was Gray's Anatomy.  I had a habit of bursting into song at random intervals during second grade...which gave my teachers fits. I often got lost in museums, not because I wandered off, but because my parents kept forgetting that I liked to read all the little placards underneath each exhibit.

When other kids were outside playing, I was in my room, stalking the dark underbelly of Gotham City with Neal Adams' Batman.  To this day I would argue that the Joker is the biggest villain in literature, Tolkien be darned.  My parents could never buy enough books for me;  within hours after we left the bookstore with a bag of comics and the latest Hardy Boys novel, I had finished them all.  Books are like old friends, with personalities all their own. I remember most of the books I've read, and treasure the books I've read more than once.  I read for fun, but I also read to learn.  If there's something that I want to know about, the first thing I do is buy a book about it, even before I consult the Google.  As a result, I have more books than our local library.  In fact, our formal dining room was converted to a library, with floor to ceiling bookshelves, and there are still boxes of books waiting to be freed from captivity.   

 I've loved words my entire life, the bigger, the better.  And I'm not afraid to use those big words in conversation, either.  If this means that nobody knows what the heck I am talking about, that's okay.
I will giggle at innocent plays on words, and I won't care a bit that nobody gets the joke but me. If I am asked a question, I have a bad habit of overexplaining and elaborating, and often I bore others to death without really intending it.   I have 7, 642 pens.  Most of them are in the very bottom of my purse.  All of them write perfectly, and I use them often, preferring to write ideas on paper than to type them into my smart phone.  I have a habit of collecting blank journals to fill with my ideas. 

I am an introvert, preferring quiet solitude to the noise of parties.  Large groups of people drain my batteries.  I am socially awkward, but I have been known to attend social events by myself and enjoy them.

Do not confuse me with a geek.  I do not have any singularly obsessive interests; I am interested in everything and everyone.  I have the minimum technical skills needed to navigate a computer, but not much else.  I have never memorized entire screenplays, but I do enjoy reciting humorous dialogue from them.  I do not know which specific scenes in the X-files contain an appearance by the Smoking Man, but I know that he was really creepy.  I have no idea what the blood used to film scenes in The Walking Dead is made of; I just know that it looks really cool.  My husband is the geek; he can recite pages from Tolkien, can tell you the family lineage of every single character in the LOTR Trilogy, and can tell you which authors were directly influenced by Tolkien and how. 

My name is Tina, and I am a nerd.




3.) Hi, my name is ______ and I am a _______.

Nerd Love

I am an old school nerd. Not an OG, of course, but I remember back before computers pretty well. Nerds are/were defined by their love of pens(and D&D, but that's for another time). The most obvious of us out there were willing to wear pocket protectors and thus suffered the scorn of the masses. What most people didn't understand is that those brave souls were wearing pocket protectors to protect the PENS, not the shirt.

I love pens. I love looking at them. I love holding them in my hand and twirling them a bit to feel their balance. I love that first time picking up the pen and writing, when you discover the flow of the ink on the paper. When the ink glides smoothly across the page, all is right with the world. I will sit there with my pen and just write or doodle(does anyone else 'doodle' by writing the names of all the Presidents in chronological order, or is that just me?) and listen to the pleasant sound of the pen as it writes. This is how Nerds enter the profound meditative state so aptly labeled 'Nerdvana' by Dogbert from the Dilbert comics.

I don't buy cheap pens where the ink flow is an iffy proposition. I buy the gel ink pens with the rollerball tips. Not a major expense. That would be excessively frivolous in these economic times. Just enough of an expense so that I feel a little decadent using the pen, but no completely hysterical if I lose the pen. I have a small phobia that I'll fall in love with a pen and it will be discontinued, so I will buy that pen in bulk. My purse weighs 50 pounds because of all the pens I've crammed into every possible place. You never know when you might run out of ink and need a new pen!

I go to a lot of meetings in my chosen field, and at the conclusion of these meetings, when all parties have reached consensus, we sign our name to a piece of paper to indicate that agreement. Inevitably, someone at the table will 'borrow' my pen to sign their name. They will admire my pen...and then they will try to walk off with MY pen. This is a serious offense in my book, because my pens are the Precious to me. Every. Last. One. I have followed people out of the meeting room because they've walked off with my pen, and have even chased offenders out to their car to retrieve my pen with the single-minded focus of Gollum.

I know this love of pens seems a bit off to other people. I don't care. Pens are deserving of adoration in my opinion. The pen made it possible for EVERYONE to write whenever they wanted, wherever they wanted, however they wanted(that last part still gives English teachers fits). It was no longer necessary for a person to memorize everything. If you could think it, you could write it down. If someone else said it, you could write it down. Isn't that great? (All my fellow Nerds out there are now glassy-eyed, some drooling, thinking fondly of their pen collections. Now would be a good time to check their pockets for chocolate, if you are so inclined.)

Pens are awesome. You should have some. Really.