Nerd

My boss called me a nerd today. It was totally warranted. It came right after she commented on my socks:I got kind of sidetracked in the middle of doing laundry and never got around to doing the dark load, with the black socks. The navy blue socks were working out okay, but I've run out of those now too. So this morning I was stuck with the white ankle socks. Well to be honest this is actually the third day I've had to wear ankle socks, but yesterday they were pink, and last Thursday they were blue and green striped.

The nerd comment made me stop and think about it. I've always been a bit of a nerd. I remember one of my cousins telling me in jr. high that the only cool thing about me was my shoes. I still remember the pair of shoes I was wearing at the time, they don't seem at all cool now. I'm not entirely convinced they were at the time either.

I don't even like to think about the flannel phase of my life and the horribly unflattering comments it generated from my own father.

My first Sunday in Pierside Sarah didn't come right out and call me a nerd, but it was sort of insinuated. After insisting that I change outfits at least three times, she finally just demanded that I show her all of the Sunday clothes I had brought with me from Utah. She barely even looked at them before she told me "I can't let you go to Pierside dressed like this. You're going to have to wear something of mine." Many of my items were objectionable based solely on her description of them as "boxy" or "oversized." Those were back in the days when I, for some inexplicable reason, believed that I was very average sized and therefore purchased clothes that would fit an average sized person. At a later date Sarah made me donate some of the more objectionable items to goodwill, and when I resisted on the grounds that "...but it's my favorite shirt, I wear it all the time" her only response was "I know, and it's got go." Finally I met Tricia who managed to convince me that I'm a 2, not a 6, and an XS, sometimes a S, but never a M or L.

My hair was another story all together. For some reason it didn't grow in even, but grew out in clumps. The pictures of me as a toddler are sort of odd. In one of them you can see where my mother had tried to put clips in my hair to try and pin down some of the longer clumps over the more bald spots. I was 3 years old and sporting a combover. My poor mother has board straight hair, and really had no better idea how to manage curly hair than I did. In junior high she allowed me to go with Sarah to get our hair permed. Sarah's looked nice (it was in style back then), mine...well let's just say that it's not a move I would recommend to anyone who already has naturally curly hair. In High school I just lopped it all off and started over...oh wait, that's right...I didn't mean to get it lopped off, the lady at Fantastic Sam's did that for me, and then told me how much better it looked because it was "just so big" before she took the unauthorized initiative of cutting it all the way to the bottom of my ears. (Although I hated her for it at the time, I now see that she really was doing me a favor.) I was well into college before I started figuring out how to manage curly hair, but for reasons that are no longer clear to me, I insisted on sporting bangs. Embarrassingly unattractive bangs, and if I'm not mistaken it was finally TRL who had the guts to tactfully suggest that I grow them out.

Meredith was the one who insisted that I abandon the little woven purse I bought in Peru, and upgrade to something that was not bright red, orange, yellow, and purple, with a strap that looked like it was going to snap at any moment.

But regardless, of the fact that my hair is sort of under control most of the time, my clothes are the appropriate sizes, and my purses are nice browns and blacks, I'm still a nerd deep down inside. I just like to think that I do a better job of hiding it now. I still have nerdy days...like when I was hiking the Subway in Zion and pulled out an oversized flannel jacket to wear during lunch. The only thing the random guy Joe from Ohio could say was "Is that quilted?" Which it was. There are the gym pants that shrunk up in the wash and are not nearly long enough anymore that I still wear. I thought Ricky was going to pass out when I wore bright orange socks with my green hiking pants in Guatemala. Then there was the incident with the white socks today, but the fact that I can actually site specific instances now gives me hope that I'm not a candidate for that "What Not To Wear" TV show. Ricky told me once that "at least when you don't have style, you know that you don't have style."