I was an odd kid. Which is the apex of understatement. I could read before I was toilet trained, I carried around a plastic grizzly bear with huge fangs and glowing red eyes that I referred to as my baby, I learned that fuck was an at-home word, not a school word when I declared I wasn't a fuckin' lefty in kindergarten.
The only step further would to have taped a sign to my back that read KICK ME.
Junior high was a blur of a bad perm, getting kicked off of handbell choir (okay, that was slightly awsome), an assignment where we had to write our obituary and I penned she will be mourned by her pets and her plants, an array of embarrassing class rollerskating parties, reading 50+ books during a a semester in Mrs. Bogen's class on a bet, and bullies.
High School was no different, although by then I had pretty much figured out my place and in the social food chain. I left behind volleyball and basketball (all that running) to pursue theatre and speech team. Even normal teenaged activities (like accompanying my friend to buy her first pack of condoms) was tarred with the nerd brush since we insisted on talking in B ritish accents. Of course, we wouldn't have classified ourselves as nerds. We were avant-garde! We we dramatic! We were wordly!
We just, uh, couldn't figure out where the prophylactics were in the local Walgreens.
We were nerds.
If the above wasn't enough, upon the assignment of our first history paper for Mr. Haake's American History AP class ("write on the history of anything!" he told us, so I wrote about the history of sex. No, I didn't write it in a British Accent.) My friend and I came up with the brilliant idea that we were going to write two papers.
- Our assigned paper, and;
- One of the History of Spam
Any High School Nerd worth their weight in graphic calculators will tell you that the Nerdvana Comedy Hour isn't complete without a tour of Monthy Python's Flying Circus (which was not only on PBS late night, so we set our VCR's and passed around worn, bootlegged tapes) but could also be rented at the local (and wholesome!) Blockbuster, where we'd ask the 17 year olds to rent us David Lynch movies since they actually checked ID. (It was ART! I told a bored cashier who refused to rent to my 16-year-old self. You are keeping me from ART! I also didn't mention I had been watching R-rated movies since I was five because the SlackParents didn't really think a few boobs were a big deal.)
The paper wasn't a page; it wasn't two pages. My friends Amy and Jenna and I wrote a fully-researched and footnoted second history paper.
On Spam.
Of course I'm still a nerd, even if I've been nominated for the Hot Blogger Calendar (have you voted for me? What are you waiting for? I've fallen to number 11, people! Vote!)
