Wow... Well, That was pretty fucking personal, now wasn't it?
slackmistress has a new post over at AntSocial Networking: 'Coming Out of the Comic Book Closet: When did you realize you were a Geek?' She writes:

'. . .I didn't realize I was a full-blown nerd until the 7th grade. . .

'I think it was Britten Trimmer, although it was nearly 25 (urp!) years ago so I could be wrong. Britten saw that each quarter I read progressively more books...first 11, then 13, then 16.

'I bet you can't read 50 books, he told me.

'Let's make it interesting, I responded.

'Okay, I didn't say let's make it interesting like some pubescent Fast Eddie with a bad perm, thick 80's eyebrows and and frosted lip gloss, but we did place the wager of a dollar. One whole dollar.

'I set about my task, which to be honest, wasn't all that difficult. It ended up being about four books a week, which was easily manageable. Each Friday, I'd write up my notecards and file them in the box under my name. As the weeks progressed, the box grew more and more stuffed until Mrs. Bogen finally gave me my own separate file.

'I read 53 books that quarter.

'As Britten admitted defeat and handed me my dollar, I basked in victory, and in the adoration of my peers. That's why they were staring at me, right?

'I looked at the chalkboard.

'A = 26-53 books
B= 11-25 books

'I blew the curve. For a dollar.

That's when I realized I was, without a doubt, a geek.

Now it's time for your coming-out stories!'

So I figured, why the fuck not, right? Let's be proud of what makes us who we are. Bits of me, after the cut. Wow. That's almost clever.

When I was eight, i created chemical solutions with my best friends that ate through metal and turned into Super Rust solids, and we were convinced that we could sell the idea to the military .

While sitting in math class, staring at the back of my chair (you know, the ones with the blue shiny enamel and the shiny silver rivets), I saw the reflection of reflections, curved around infinity, and I knew that there had to be other realities, in each one of those, where something was just a little different.

I designed a grappling hook glove.

We wrote a MegaMan screen play, in third grade.

I drew and created comics with my best friends, in school, and over the summer in programs Sponsored by the school.

I've always read comics. I've always loved science and art and books and had an appreciation for math, even after I was no good at it.

There was no "coming out," for me. I was so immersed in a culture of people for whom this was the Spice, which was the life, which MUST FLOW that it never occurred to me, that people would be any different, anywhere; that having these interests could ever be a bad thing.

Then I got to Georgia, seventh grade. Different values. Different people. Different groups. Completely different dynamics. Terrible. Detached. Scary things... I actually left, and went back to DC, because of it. I came back, though, and eighth-tenth grades were more of the same from seventh, though I coped, better. For the most part. Not really, at all, actually. They were pretty terrible years.

But then I got to my high school, the one I count as truly mine, and I knew that it was still okay. That there were more people who loved geeky and nerdy things, and that I was happiest, with them. What's more? They were cool. Cooler than any of the people in middle school, or the other HS. They knew things I didn't and listened to me when I knew what they didn't.

That school shaped the perspective lens through which I view every situation and everything I would encounter and become, over the next nine years.

So, really, it wasn't exactly a coming out. It was more like coming home.

And that's my story...

There you are then. A bit more about me.

You should be reading and participating in the awesome that is AntiSocial Networking.

Ta.