Early Evidence That You Were A Nerd

[RoJoHen]

Being one of those 7-8 people out of my entire grade school class to be pulled out in the middle of the day to be put into the "gifted" program. This continued through 6th grade, when the gifted program ceased to exist. At that point I was just in all the Honors and/or AP classes.

[RandyS]

I was born with cerebral palsy, and was not very popular as a kid because of it, and was treated like shit by girls in my teens and all through my twenties also because of it. As a result, I was always socially akward, and tended (and still do) to have friends (what few would bother with me) in the same vein.

Even though my mom was the one who introduced me to Star Trek (she was an original Trekkie, and had me in 1970), between that and Star Wars, and the original Battlestar Galactica (which came out when I was seven and eight, respectively), I discovered an early love for sci-fi. As I entered my pre-teen years, I also discovered a love for prose sci-fi, also due in part to my mom, who taught me to read from an early age.

From all this, I figured I was a nerd from birth.

In short, it's all my mom's fault. And the girls who wouldn't date me.

Women......

Of course, THAT argument falls on it's ass when you consider the fact that my girlfriend is ALSO nerd with a love of sci-fi.

[CorporalClegg]

RandyS wrote:

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I was born with cerebral palsy

Me too. I'm sure the endless hours I spent in physical therapy only encouraged my nerdism. I don't remember much of it other than it was brutal.

It wasn't just the PT, on the even days of the week, I had to do fine-motor training which was worse. The doctors made it sound like it was going to be this great struggle in my life and forced me to do these ridiculous "activities." About the only thing it got me was, by the time I reached junior high, my penmanship was way better than anyone else's.

It was a bit of contention between my parents. My mom fussed over it endlessly while my dad called all those doctors a bunch of kooks. I was playing the piano by the time I was four and the guitar by six. My motor skills couldn't have been that bad.

The only real adverse effect it's had in my life was it kept me out on Annapolis despite my best attempts to lie about it.

Now really all I can say is I have a bit of a gait. People just think I walk funny. Most don't even notice. I suppose in hindsight, all that PT was worth it. But it was fucking hell for a toddler.

[scotpens]

Kestra wrote:

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. . . I think one of the first signs for me was the fact that I chose to sit around and read all the encyclopedias.

I did the same thing. Sometimes I'd take a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia into the bathroom with me, so the time I spent on the toilet wouldn't be wasted.

I was a confirmed sci-fi geek by the time I was 7 or so. I made a point of watching every science fiction movie or TV program. For my 10th birthday party, my mom ordered a custom-baked cake with the design of a rocket taking off on top.

CorporalClegg wrote:

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. . .I've also been fascinated with fighter planes all of my life. I use to doodle them all the time.

I used to doodle pictures of Supercar all the time. And robots. And Edsels. For some reason, I was fascinated by the Edsel. I mean, how many grade schoolers in the 1950s and early '60s were Edsel freaks?

[RAMA]

I never recognized myself as one. I remember liking Devo, but then for awhile lots of people did. I knew the friends a played with didn't care much for me making spaceships out of anything I could find, but I did other stuff with them too. Later on I pretty much did everything "normally" in public while spending time in private with my interests. I never even met a "Trekkie" or at least any one else who admitted to be one till my early 20s. I went to a convention a couple of years later and met lots of Trekkies.

[Opus]

I think I was one of two kids in my neighborhood into sci-fi. Trek reruns, The Six Million Dollar Man, Space 1999, Dr. Who, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Land of the Lost, Starblazers, Force Five and Star Wars made up my childhood. I played D&D and loved watching Monty Python late at night on PBS with my dad.

Nerd.

[Kestra]

I'm loving all the stories.

[J. Allen]

CorporalClegg wrote:

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I, too, was an avid reader.

My grandma got me the condensed (or compact) OED when I was six or seven. I read it cover to cover. I often joke my vocabulary was better when I was in the second grade than it is now. It did give me the audacity to call one of my teachers senescent.

...

[Ood Sigma]

When I was 6, I demanded an Apple ][ for Christmas because they had one at school and computers were just so cool. I ended up getting a lower-end computer (Texas Instruments) but from that my love of computers and programming was born. I spent more time on BASIC programming than playing the games.

I'm trying to think when I liked geeky TV shows... my brother of all people introduced me to TNG when I was in high school (this was during the 3rd or 4th season). I have a vague memory of watching an episode of TOS at a friends' house when I was very little (maybe 7 or 8) and it scaring the crap out of me. Not even sure what episode it was but it had to do with a red alert and an asteroid or some other space object getting closer and closer on the view screen.

[EmoBorg]

i collected and played Magic: The Gathering when i was a teen. I guess that made me a nerd.

I did not become a fan of star trek until i was in my twenties when i first saw reruns of voyager. I had seen several episodes of TNG and TOS in my teens but i was not interested in them and hence i did not follow them But VOY was the show that converted me to being a star trek fan. Babylon 5 bought me to sci fi earlier before. It was a slow conversion from the mid 1990s to the early 2000s.

[Mutenroshi]

I would say 'all of the above.'
I started watching Star Trek early on (I was four) and became massively interested with astronomy. When I graduated from high school, I was given my 'file', the one that followed me my whole school curriculum. It was written 'always talks about space, planets and rocket ships...'
You have to keep in mind that 'nerd' is NOT a recognized term in my country. Never were a group of people (kids) identified as such. The fact that I started to wear glasses from the age of 5 didn't help too.
I too was an avid reader. And as a space geek, my very first book was Explorers On The Moon. I wasn't able to read when I got it and it's filled with doddles (le rolleyes!).
I remember smiling during the opening credits of UFO Robot Grendizer, The Six Million Dollar Man and I would pretend that I too had bionic implants and to prove it so, I would run in slo-mo...
A the age of 13, I got my first computer, an Amstrad 6128. It was with a fucking disc and it was oh so fast!!! I spent my first pay ever on a CASIO fx8500 calculator. And it still works!
In December 1993, I was with my then gf and we stopped in front of a model workshop. There was a model that caught my eyes: The Enterprise A from TUC. I had to buy it!
I completed my nerd training when I first joined the TrekBBS.

[Rhaven]

Spending all my spare time reading vs playing with the other kids.
Knowing all the names of the constilations visible in the night sky at the age of 6.
Doing my older brother's math home work in my head, for fun.
Spending hours trying to get my hand to do the Vulcan sign which wouldn't work. So I glued my pinky and ring fingers together with super glue. Mom wasn't happy with me, to say the least.
Searching for any rerun of TOS in the TV Guide and staying up to watch them, over and over

[J. Allen]

Another sign that I was surely a nerd was when I was in school (7th grade AP English), and wrote on a vocabulary paper under the word "Impulse" the following definition:

Impulse; A fusion engine that propels a starship to sublight speeds equivalent to 1/10th c.

[Orac Zen]

Reading. All the time. Pretty much anything I could pick up, I'd read. Encyclopaedias were heavy but I managed.

Watching classic Who and not being even remotely freaked out by the Daleks (the hiding-behind-the-couch thing made zero sense to me).

Almost every project I did in primary school was about space. Astronomy fascinated me from an early age.

Classic Who aside, if it was a TV SF series, I watched it. Even Lost in Space.

[Miss Chicken]

^^^I was more scared of the William Hartnell Doctor than I was of the Daleks. And my earliest crash was for Jamie McCrimmon.