day 193: tales from a used-to-be nerd

Alright.

I confess.

I used to be a nerd.

A seriously hard-core one.

I know it seems impossible now.

But once upon a time, it was quite true.

When I ran out of books to read at home, in between library visits, I resorted to the 1970s era World Book encyclopedias that weighed down a shelf in our living room. Truth be told, I read the encyclopedias. With no point other than to learn something new.

But the nerdiness didn't stop there. I wrote reports. Usually on animals. During the summer. Just for fun. And I printed them out on our state-of-the-art dot matrix printer, complete with the paper where you had to tear the strips off the sides.

I played bored games, like Monopoly and Life. But by myself. For hours on end.

Then when I got bored with that, I did a little stat keeping. Our farm house sat along a busy state road. My bedroom window overlooked that road. So there I sat, on my bed, in front of the window, pad of paper and pen in hand. I tracked how many cars went by in a certain time period. And also what colors they were. For no reason at all other than to pass the time.

And then, there is the pinnacle of what my sisters consider the nerdiest of all. It involved my crayons. Like any other kid, I loved to color. But my relationship with my crayons went much further than that. I sorted them. By color. By length. By brand. I even married them (not me, silly). The crayons married each other. Ones of similar height, when they found another one that they looked good with. I had them get married.

But that was all a long time ago. I now read picture books to my kids before bed and chapter books for my job. I play Monopoly Jr. with my kids, and sometimes Life on my iPhone. The reports I write usually have to do with student discipline. I'd actually love it if I had the time to sit on my front porch and count the cars that go by. And the crayons--I'm usually picking those up off the floor or yelling at kids to put them away.

Imagine my horrors (or pride? I'm not sure yet) when this was the scene at my dinner table two nights ago:

There sat my youngest. She had finished her homework, which required coloring. The homework was finished and had since been put away, but the crayons still remained. And there she sat for close to an hour and a half. Sorting, lining up, matching......and marrying. I kid you not. She married ones that were close to the same length and that "looked good together", or so she said.

Poor kid.

I see lone games of Monopoly in her future.

She was so into it, though, so I let her keep on playing. Finally, when bedtime could be delayed no longer, I told her we needed to pick up. She happily obliged, chatting away to me about the crayon "people" she'd been playing with, why some of them liked each other, why others didn't, why blue liked to be with pink, etc. And then, as the last few crayons were dumped into the box, she said:

"Mom, coloring outside the lines is actually the best thing to do."

That kid was made to color outside the lines. And I'm so glad she does.