To be a Nerd, or Not To be a Nerd...

Yesterday Adrien and I talked about how we're secretly (or not so) nerds. I think this is pretty obvious of me at times. I'm quite obviously enamored with Harry Potter. There are other things that make me a nerd...for instance, my recently acquired infatuation with Speed Racer, as in the movie. I suppose my nerdiness could be divided into four categories. They are: fantasy, space, superheroes, and a category that catches all the history and literature I'm obsessed with. Fantasy includes Harry Potter and occasionally Lord of the Rings, though I think I liked the movies more than the books; or at least I liked the Fellowship book. That didn't make sense. Moving on. The space category is probably filled to the brim with Star Wars-- I even had my mind made up at one point I would be attending Celebration IV. The rest is filled with the X-Files, which I'm putting in the space category because the main story involves aliens. Possibly the biggest portion of my nerd pie is the Superhero part (by the way, Speed Racer doesn't really fit anywhere, so I'm putting him with Superheroes since he is pretty super and more than one person's hero, I'm sure). Mostly I love movie versions of superhero stories-- never really got into the whole comic book thing. If you plan on watching a movie with me and aren't sure what to show, a safe bet is something superhero-y. There's something about the conflict of someone who's supposed to be incredibly strong (or whatever) but has internal issues. It's either that or the ridiculous uniforms and cool powers. But my nerdiness extends beyond typical nerd realms...I consider myself a nerd for being obsessed with ancient histories and peoples. I'm also a sucker for literature-- an infatuation undoubtedly started by my mom, who had us celebrate the birthdays of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson, to name a few. We built models of the globe theatre, we acted out plays for our parents, and more than a few times attended the Shakespeare festival in Cedar City on our way to visit Grandparents in Utah. When I was in 4th grade I wrote a cat version of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquoy. We used to play games where we had to name as many of Shakespeare's plays as we could in a certain amount of time, sometimes having to know the characters, plot, etc. Yeah.
But now that I think of it, anyone can be a nerd about anything. Like how my sisters and I are travel nerds. We've never been able to afford a real trip, but we plan them like mad and stock up on guidebooks and travel literature and spend hours talking about what we'd pack and what we'd see, much to the chagrin of my brothers-in-law (sometimes I feel special knowing I'm the only unmarried/unattatched one and can in theory be the first one to travel abroad, though this will probably never happen because of the whole lack of money thing). I think if you have a strange (or not) obsession with anything, it can make you a nerd in other people's eyes (you know, some people are fashion nerds, some people are church nerds, some people are food nerds, music nerds, band nerds, etc). And I think that I have a healthy balance of enough things that aren't too outrageous (uh...like marching band, which even though I was in all through high school, hated with all the fire of a thousand suns and wouldn't be caught dead being happy at being called a 'band nerd') that it's okay with me.
The fact that I devoted a post to talking about my nerdiness shows how much of a nerd I am.