Neek Pride Day

Today is Nerd or Geek Pride Day, which I have also converted into Neek Pride Day. Happy Pride Day to all my dear nerds, geeks, and neeks!

To celebrate, I’m going to visit my brother, a fellow neek if there ever was one. It’s always interesting when I visit my brother. Sometimes we stay in and do totally awesome neek things like have an anime marathon & drinking game, or play magic cards. Sometimes we go out and party, or go be active and play something like ultimate Frisbee (which I fail at). I’m not sure what we’re doing this time. He promised we’d go play laser tag though, so I’m pretty psyched about that.

On the other hand, I am not at all excited about my layover in Chicago. It seems like my flights ALWAYS go through Chicago. I’m getting sick of their food options. And really, how do they not have a Starbucks in the airport?? Don’t get me wrong I normally appreciate local coffee places, but right now I am desperately craving a mocha cookie crumble frappuccino. How dare you deny me, Chicago!! I don’t want to get one after finally landing… that’ll be way too late in the afternoon. I don’t process caffeine the same way I used to. Curse you, Chicago Midway!

That was a rather large digression. I apologize, those cookie crumble frapps are just sooooo good.

Today I actually want to talk more about pride. I’m very happy there is a holiday devoted to nerd/geek/neek pride. Interestingly enough, I used to think I wasn’t the type of person that had a lot of pride.

I’m not sure why really. I certainly wasn’t the opposite either; it’s not like I was ashamed of myself or anything. Pride just wasn’t a word I really connected with myself.

When I was in college, I took a class where we converted a medieval play into a more modern version. Everyone in the class had different jobs to get it set up, and then most of us also acted in the play. I was part of the crew that actually wrote it. Our medieval play was the Castle of Perseverance, which we turned into Fast Times at Morality High. It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Honestly no idea what I'm doing in this shot.

The Virtues became cheerleaders at the school. The Vices became a gang. I was cast as a Vice, Pride. My friends and I thought it was a bit odd, because again, I don’t identify myself as particularly prideful, but I figured I didn’t really match any of the other roles either. Plus I had a lot of fun with it. We were doing it 80s style, so I threw my hair into crazy curls and got some jellies. I went looking for pictures of us Vices in our full 80s glory, and stumbled upon the website we created for the play. Too bad we don’t have the full video up! You’d be in for a treat.

It really wasn’t until this week that I started to rethink my stance on what it means to have pride. I was reading Divergent (which is super awesome and gets 2 thumbs up from me) and the main character was talking about how she had too much pride. She identified it as the weakness for a group, as their pride kept them acting tough and doing crazy, dangerous things just so they wouldn’t lose face.

Seriously, it was like a light bulb moment. Unbeknownst to myself, I have always been INSANELY prideful. It just blends in so well with some of my other more obvious traits (stubbornness, defiance), that I never realized it was part of the problem.

Take for instance, one of my mother’s favorite examples of an early childhood moment that confirmed I would be a handful. My mother had surgery on her foot, so my grandmother was staying with us for a few weeks to help out. Now I already had my mother trained on how to dress me for kindergarten, but apparently my grandmother missed the memo because she tried to make me wear pants. So what if it was the winter?? I wore fluffy dresses. Everyone wore fluffy dresses. I absolutely refused to put on the pants, and would not go to school in anything except one of my dresses.

Don’t worry, I won the argument. I always thought this situation was just because I wanted to wear a dress, but in reconsidering, the whole reason I wore fluffy dresses (besides liking them) was because I was proud. It was a status symbol in our class. Sure, no one would really care if I went one day without a dress, but I had faaaaaaaaaar too much pride to hold myself to the lower standards of people who dressed according to the weather. I was one of the few girls that sat at the top of the jungle gym damnit, and by God I would not lose face be being relegated to the lower half with the pants wearers!

And this was when I was in kindergarten. Imagine how much worse that pride has been getting without me realizing it.

But pride is not a negative thing. Sometimes it might lead to some extreme reactions, but in general I think it’s important to have pride in yourself.

Now that I think about it, there are several areas where I’ve always had a lot of pride. I’m a proud Steelers fan. I’m proud of my Scottish heritage. And we all know how proud I am of my epic reading abilities.

So let’s all celebrate the fact that what were formerly belittling traits are now cause for pride. Celebrate your neekness! And while you’re at it, celebrate and be proud of all the other things that make you, well, YOU!

I’ll finish with good news as well! I just realized I’m flying through DALLAS on my way there, not Chicago. That’s on the way back. Now as long as Dallas airport has a Starbucks I will be one happy neek!