Thursday Nerdsday - Raising the Geeks of the Future

Though I've known for most of my life that I was a geek, I tried to fight it for a good many years. It wasn't until fairly recently that I really began to embrace it, and the longer I've lived here on the other side, the more I can see that it's nothing at all like I was afraid it would be.

Are there people who still pick on me for some things I love? Sure. I've been called out for referring to myself as a superhero more than once.

That's never going away. I just don't let it bother me anymore.

Are there people who dwell in this new world that I have more in common with than the non-geeks? Absolutely.

I fought back certain pieces of my personality for most of my life. I was always the smart one, the dorky one, the one who used bigger words than I should have. My nose was always in a book. I wasn't athletic. I didn't really fit in with any one group of friends. I tried and tried to fight it, often pretending to be someone I wasn't just for the sake of belonging somewhere.

I don't ever want my kids to go through that. I don't want them to feel like they have to reject pieces of who they are and replace them with what society says they should just to have friends and be accepted.


I try my best to teach them this. Be who you are and don't pretend to be something you're not.

You want to spend all day drawing anime characters? Fine.

You want to cut apart nerf guns and make steampunk rayguns? Okay.

You want to generate a third RPG character? Go for it.

You want to make zombie movies? Cool.

You want to watch an entire season of Dr. Who today? Slow down and let me catch up!

We dressed up as DC superheroes last Halloween and have mostly decided what we are doing this year. It's pretty geeky, I'll give you that hint. At Comic Con, my husband and I dressed up as superheroes again and my oldest made a Star Trek costume himself.

We read. A lot. I'm trying to finish Jane Eyre at the same time I'm doing this 12 week/12 book challenge with my kids. The summer challenge with the kids isn't really anything new since we read most of the Harry Potter series a few years ago, with the requirement that we finish each book before we watched the movies. I made the older two read The Hunger Games before they could see the movie last year. The books I've chosen this year are all ones that have been made into movies as well, and dare I say it? My kids have become critics. They read and dissect the books and point out every single deviation in the movie versions.

It makes me proud. Not just that they are paying that much attention, but that they are all loving this process. That they are seeing that the books are better than the movies. That they usually get so into the stories about halfway through that we end up hunkering down and finishing it in one afternoon so they can watch the movies and rip them apart.

We're reading Jaws during Shark Week because I taught them many years ago to love sharks just like their crazy mother does.

I want to hurry up and finish Jane Eyre so I can start reading Game of Thrones. My husband is ahead of me in that series already.

We are going to the Renaissance Faire this year for the first time with the kids, and they are already planning what they will wear, asking if we can make fairy wings.

Don't get me wrong, we don't reject all things pop culture to live in this nerdiverse. We love music too, and it's a huge part of our lives. There is always music on in our home. My oldest can already play 6 instruments.

We love sports. We plan our weekends around college football games. We've been a soccer family forever. The girls are probably both playing softball this year, and the oldest is looking forward to playing basketball and wrestling again. Little boy is literally already a parkour athlete.

We love all those things, and we embrace all the pieces of ourselves and our children. The mainstream ones that society deems acceptable and the quirky ones that aren't so widely accepted. We let them be who they are, and we celebrate it.

I was the black sheep as a kid, and I don't ever want them to feel like they stick out in this family. We'll all be weird together....someone will love us for it.