When Did I Realize I Was a Geek?
Written by GeekGirlCon Manager of Editorial Services Winter Downs.
Like a lot of geeks, that self-knowledge crept up on me without my noticing, but looking back, there were many early warning signs.
The Nazgul: here to teach little hobbitses a valuable lesson about road safety.
Image source: arwen-undomiel
It started with a love of reading, especially sci-fi and fantasy. My bookwormish nature led me quickly to classic British fantasy professors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I read The Lord of the Rings over and over. I was never seen without a book in hand–so much so that my Year 3 (2nd Grade) teacher called me “Nose-in-Book” as if it were part of my name. I was just lucky that most of my walk to school took me down pedestrian-only paths, or I’d probably have been run over while Frodo got stabbed by a Nazgûl on Weathertop. I wrote my first novella, a Narnia-inspired fantasy, at age 7. (Mercifully, no copies are still extant!)
Michelangelo in 2014, riding a hare for some reason. He’s wearing the fruits of my more recent geeky labors: a hand-sewn waistcoat and a knit fez. What? Fezes are cool.
Photo by Nathan Downs
I also loved computers. Video games, sure, but also just playing about with computers to see what they could do. Back when I had my Amiga 500, I subscribed to a magazine and loved following the tutorials to see what you could program in Basic. Money was pretty tight when I was a kid, so I made that thing last until 1997, printing out college applications on my dot matrix printer, which I had to hand-feed each page individually. In the end, I basically loved it to death.
Speaking of loved to death, my little brother Nath and I shared several geeky interests, most notably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We had a Michelangelo plushie who saw so many adventures that these days he’s looking a bit the worse for wear.
Nath as Michelangelo and me as April O’Neil, c. 1990.
Photo by Michael Downs
The Turtles were also the inspiration for my first ever cosplay.
For me, being a geek doesn’t just mean liking geeky things; it means applying a geeky sensibility, love of learning, and, OK, obsessive tendencies to every aspect of my life. It means scouring Camden Market for rare vinyl during my teenage record-collector years, and reading philosophy books because the Manic Street Preachers referenced them in their lyrics. It means taking apart every knitting pattern before casting on because I just know I can tweak things here, or improve the math there. It means knowing how to spell words but not how to pronounce them, because I read them in a book years before I heard anyone say them aloud.
It meant, in 1980s-early 90s Stoke-on-Trent, feeling very much an outsider. If I hadn’t self-labeled as a geek, other kids would have made sure I knew it, with their constant taunts of “keeno” (meaning someone who is keen at school). I’ve never been good at passing as typical in any context, so that just led me to double down.
Even in the midst of that, geekiness led me to my people, and started me on my path to geeky community-building. It’s safe to say that the folks I met through geeky pursuits have shaped the course of my life.
My best friend, Laura, was also a music lover and sci-fi nerd. We had so many in-jokes based on lyrics and TV quotes that we practically spoke our own language. We spent every Friday lunchtime at Cyberzone, a sci-fi TV club run by our favorite teacher, and in between watching episodes of Red Dwarf or Doctor Who, we would geek out with the teacher about the concert we’d all been to that week.
As older teenagers my friends and I mashed up our geeky loves of theater, music, and sci-fi to put on (among other things) an apocalypse-themed performance-art party at a nightclub. Soon after that, I found my fellow geeks online, and I ended up moving to the US to be with someone I’d met on a fan forum for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
These days, geeky community building, especially in a city like Seattle, is easier than ever. I’m so lucky to be a part of the GeekGirlCon family. I especially love to see young geeks being welcomed into the fold; it’s like coming full circle.
[…] a lot of bookwormish people, I went through a phase–in my case, in my late teens–when I became preoccupied with […]