Wave the Geek Flag High, Ladies!

Of course I’m a geek. When I was a kid, my two older brothers schooled me in Star Trek, war games, and these enormous machines they called “computers.” My dad, a nuclear physicist, chased down tiny atomic secrets in his lab and critical thinking at our dinner table. My mom, an actress, could create fantastical […]
Wave it high ladies
Image: Kate Miller

Of course I’m a geek.

When I was a kid, my two older brothers schooled me in Star Trek, war games, and these enormous machines they called “computers.” My dad, a nuclear physicist, chased down tiny atomic secrets in his lab and critical thinking at our dinner table. My mom, an actress, could create fantastical costumes out of any old junk while quoting reams of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson flawlessly. Everybody was thinking, reading, challenging, and obsessing, all the time. I didn’t stand a chance.

And so I came up a proud nerd, and a girl to boot. In elementary school I watched as other girls dropped out one by one – plunk, plunk, plunk – from the math and science tracks. Later in high school I got street cred with the boys by kicking butt at Dungeons & Dragons and AP calculus class, where I sat in front of a kid named Jerry, who loudly announced one day that he had a zit on his butt. This, friends, was my reality.

At some point I decided to wield the geekiness for good. If I was good at statistics and science, then hey, I could have a career in international women’s health. I could get a PhD and work in developing countries! I could use my statistical powers to fight for decent Pap smears in rural Burkina Faso! And so I did. Rock on.

Then I had kids and everything changed. These days I believe that – hold on to your hats – nobody can be a true, deep, genuine geek unless they have given birth. Sorry, men, but you’ll just never experience the Alien-lunchroom-scene reality of your body creating another human being out of nothing but pasta, cheese nachos, and a roll in the hay. For a wicked awesome gadget, I'll take my own uterus over an iPad any day.

Now that my kids are a bit older, we nerd out together. The other day my 6-year-old said, coming across a periodic table in a book, “Ah, it’s like meeting an old friend.” I am not making this up. The relentless intergenerational transfer of geek continues.

In short, I’m a mom, a scientist, and a geek, loud and proud. And I’m so happy to be blogging here at GeekMom. I hope you'll tune in!