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I Was A Nerdy Child I had dinner with a friend the other night. Her flatmates are in their late twenties; I am in my early twenties. Now, normally I wouldn't think that there would be much of a difference, but how wrong I was. I have now come to the conclusion that I was very nerdy child. I have quite old-fashioned parents. No, make that, old parents. My mother had me when she was 36. That was quite old for a first child back in the late 70's, early 80's. Now, most of my friend's parents are in their early forties. My mum is 57 and my dad is 62. They're almost old enough to by my grandparents! I'm pretty sure that the reason I was a nerdy child had something to do with my parent's age, at least that's what I'm going to tell myself. My parents did things like buy matching outfits for my sister, who is 21 months younger than me, and I and make us wear them at least three times a week. We had pinafores. We had woollen stockings. We had Commando M's, in various colours none the less. Our parents didn't have very good dress sense, which directly reflected onto us. My mum used to put iron-on-transfers onto our pink knickers. I'm not sure exactly why. I think we asked her. I had a boy haircut. It was almost a bowl-cut, but not quite. When I say "not quite", I mean the hairdressers tried to do a bowl-cut but didn't quite succeed. I've had glasses since I was 8, and I was always runty. I was always in the front row of school photos, and I was always at the bottom of the list when we had our height measured for Physical Education. In fact, I think I was actually a small boy. Maybe my parents paid for a sex change and didn't inform me. I was somewhat of a tomboy. Obviously, the physical aspects played a big part. I mean, I didn't have long, blonde ringlets and I didn't have pink and white tassels on the handlebars of my bicycle. I had a short, brown, bow-cut-wannabe hairstyle and a green Raleigh Twenty. What a trendsetter. I liked to climb trees. I loved trains and had a very cool train set - not one of those crappy Fisher Price or the like ones, a real model set that my father bought me. I went fishing with my Dad. I went exploring in Barton's Bush and played by the creek. I rode my bike with my friend Tarati and caused havoc. I didn't really play with Barbie's. I'll admit that I had a couple, but they were really only so I could play along with my sister who was an absolute Barbie fanatic. Instead, games were invented. Tarati and I invented a game that proved to be hours of fun. One person would hide behind a bush with a pile of tennis balls, and the other person would ride past the bush. The person hiding would throw the tennis balls at the wheels until they got caught up and you fell off. Obviously, this was a game that brought about hours of pleasure and extremely painful grazes. Another friend of mine, Phillipa, and I had fun finding dead animals and leaving them on the doorstep of our Form One teachers classroom. By golly, did we dislike her! I collected horror novels until I was about 13. I read copious amounts of books. I also taught myself how to write programs on the Commodore 64 when I was 12. Didn't everyone do things like that? Well, I thought so until I sat down and had dinner with Petryce and her flatmates. It would appear that they all had obsessions with Madonna and copied her style from the 80's and early 90's. I was listening to MC Hammer (oh, wasn't he the funkstyler) and Janet Jackson. I was in love with Colour Me Bad and Toni Toné Tone or whatever they were called. Why didn't I like Madonna!? Why didn't I want the white lace fingerless gloves and the leather bracelets? Why? Am I a freak? I think I was a nerdy child. At the very least, I was a boyish child. Maybe I'm supposed to be a boy. I should probably check or something. |