The Geek Gene

In my sixth grade class, the geekiest kids got the most privileges.  The word “geek” didn’t even really exist back then, but we knew who we were…Beta Club members, library volunteers, Olympics of the Mind participants.  Snubbed, of course, by the popular clique, but secretly knowing that our book smarts gave us a serious leg up in the school hierarchy. 

We got out of class to help chaperone field trips for the younger elementary classes, to work our time slots in the school library, and to serve as messengers for the school office.  Thank God we liked to read, or we would have never learned a single thing in all of middle school. 

But the biggest privilege of all for us geeks was getting to spend time in the computer resource room.  In the early eighties, my school’s “computer lab” was  a partitioned off corner of the teacher’s resource room, stocked with three microwave-sized monstrosities called ‘Apple Macintosh IIe’s.  As my homies and I huddled around those three marvelous machines with their flashing cursors of promise we could foresee a bright future for ourselves…

Twenty-odd years later, that future has arrived, in the form of Blackberries, GPS, iphones, and wi-fi spots in every popular eatery.  When I was learning how to draw stick figures using BASIC on that black and white monitor, I could have never even fathomed an image of my future son sitting in his bedroom Skype-ing with his buddy about his latest Runescape acquisition, playing a multi-player online game with 450 other people, and tweaking the design of his own personal website-all at the same time!  But, oh, it would have made me so proud!

Something I didn’t know about those formative years with the flashing grayscale screens was that I was making impressions not only on my psyche, but on my genes as well.  No studies were being done to test whether geekiness was a nature or nurture kind of thing, so no one told me that my passion for all things techie would somehow create a genetic mutation.  And seeing as how I fell in love and married a man so wholly terrified of technology in general, I saw no reason to expect that the geek gene would be a dominant one.  And then they were born, the two miraculous loves of my life….in all their geeky glory.  

So, as you might expect, this blog is the story of one chaotic, technotronic, moronic homeschooling family who embraces their cyber-life and makes no apologies.  We are happy for you to laugh with us, at us, or any combination of these.  Just so long as you are along for the ride.  Welcome to our topsy-techie life….