• Damn Firefly references kill me in polite company... I remember using the "I aim to misbehave" line at an office christmas party, and rather than incite debauchery as I intended I got the awkward stare for a few seconds....

• YAY for not being the only one who is sexually attracted to brains! Theoretical brains, that is.

• I was on the fencing team in high school and ended up meeting a few guys at the local fencing center who played a text-based RPG called Gemstone III. Needless to say, this game (and my newly created half-elf ranger) consumed my free time from that day forward, to the point where my boyfriend told me that I had to choose between him and the game. Eight years later I still play, and haven't had cause to regret that particular decision!

• I am six years old and it is 1988 and I love dinosaurs. I live dinosaur. I breath dinosaur. I become dinosaur. My mum bought me a book of cut-out dinosaurs that you could stand up in flimsy little cardboard stands. (She only bought me the Cretaceous book, so I pleaded and begged until I got the Jurassic and Triassic versions.) There were dozens of these paper things, under the bed, in the bed, in my toybox. Being a grown up, one day my mother told me "Put them somewhere else tidy. Or I'll smack you." I am six years old, but there are over a hundred children's books on my shelves. Mostly trade paperback size. I carefully make a layer of books covering my floor. Next, I carefully place all the Triassic dinosaurs lying down on the books. They are extinct, so I place another layer of books over them. Fossils. Next come the Jurassic dinosaurs. Again, I fossilise them with books. Finally, the Cretaceous dinosaurs are buried. MUM: Grrr WHY blah PUT them AWAY grrr! Me: Look, they're fossilised in sedimentary rock! Here's the apatosaurus, or brontosaurus. See? MUM: <INCOMPREHENSIBLE MUTED RAGE> I got a smack for my careful troubles, but the nerd lasted a lifetime :)

• 9th grade, up until then I did enjoy nerdy endeavors and thought nothing of it, figured everyone else was the same. I guess I figured even the jocks were working on simple programs on their Apple IIe computers, not like I really went to their houses to confirm. 9th grade, I join the math club. We decide that it would not only be cool to design and make our own math club t-shirts, but we also pick math termed nicknames to put on the back. I pick Denominator for my nickame due to the fact that it sounds like Terminator, but realize that it is more fitting because I am like Charlie Brown just the kid on the bottom...of the fraction.

• I've always been nerdy, and my realization of that was relatively boring. But, I just spent the past six hours reading through these, at work, flipping back and forth to the comics I have on my USB drive here. I can't believe the emotional connection one can have with stories like these. My nerd group from youth mostly got caught up in drugs and moved off to Harvard, so I've been without nerdy friends for years now, which hasn't been so bad, but reading these today has been like a massive dose of nostalgia. The potency of this sense of nostalgia has left me with a whole new lease on my nerdism. Thanks everyone for sharing. PS: Nerdiest action I've taken is probably naming my first son Kaiba (he was awesome in season 1, really!). PPS: I also remember writing a parody song Federation Pie, to American Pie, wherein each verse was about a different destruction of an Enterprise. Search for Spock, Yesterday's Enterprise, Cause and Effect, Generations...I can't remember the fifth one! PPPS: Or was it when a friend and I were volunteering at the library, and while reshelving books we came up with an entire Magic set (Legends had just come out) based on Arthurian legends. PPPPS: Oh yeah, and when I first got a car, we went out to store parking lots with a stack of note cards, on which we wrote all kinds of crazy stuff, from Star Trek quotes to in jokes we barely understood ourselves. We'd put them on car windshields and watch the people from afar as they got back to their cars. AND, later, when RPing in the World of Darkness, set in our real town, a player actually killed our game world selves for driving about like idiots and doing such things.

• In 7th grade I decided to take wood shop because it seemed like an easy class (is this sounding familiar?). I showed up for the first day in my E.T. brand eyeglasses and Member's Only jacket and quickly realized I was in for a world of hurt. Over the course of the semester, every single person in that class kicked my butt. Girls included. But the kicker was actually watching Breakfast Club later that year. And seeing that caricature reflected back at me. Think about it - Andy gets with Allison, Bender gets with Claire and Brian gets to do everyone's homework. I already knew I was a nerd, but that was okay. So were my friends. Everything was fun and cool. The real tragedy of the experience was finally seeing what that life held in store for me. Homework. And beatings.

• When I argued that I wasn't cheating in class, I refused to accept a lose-lose situation. I tried to relate the story of the Kobayashi Maru to my teacher, but he sent me to the principals office. That was fifth grade. Also, when the other girls had Posters of the New Kids on the Block and JTT, I had Westley Crusher.

• You couldn't have shortened that? Seriously, you broke the Comments page in Firefox for me.. I had to use IE to post my story :(

• I realized my Nerd-dom rather late in life. I was dating this really hot girl: 5'10, fake 36 D's, just an over all hot mexican woman. She told me, she'd never seen star wars..and she wanted too. So i got my dvd's and started with Ep1. we got to the end of ep4, Death Star trench, and she was getting...as i say, happy in the pants. I wouldnt have it. I wasnt paying any attention, i was completly focused on Luke and his X-wing. After the movie was over...i realized what had happen. I sort of cried. I turned down sex for star wars...

• I think the next contest should be examples of nerd persecution you have experienced

• Of course! I <i>had</i> to--'wouldn't have been enough space, otherwise. Come to think of it, I've got something similar going on with the rows of books on the foot locker next to my bed, at the moment, and a large vertical stack on the front of the shelf in front of my bed, too. Unfortunately, it would be impractical to suspend books from my ceiling, which is a shame, because the space is otherwise mostly wasted. Lousy gravity.

• While I have worn glasses and been a "reader" since about the age of 9, played D&D with my brothers as a child/teenager (and as an adult), and love just about all sci-fi and fantasy, my moment came just two weeks ago. While sitting on the couch watching the new Star Trek, my boyfriend who is not a geek was asking me who these people were. Well, me being quite offended at this silly little question began reciting every character's name and history for him. From the original characters to the spin-offs, I had every ST character covered. To really get the full picture, he is 6'7" and I am a tiny 5'6" to his HUGE stature. He looks at me, pats me on the head and says, "You are such a geek, but I love you anyway." Swear to god, I turned so red I had to hide my face. So yeah, here I am, nearly 32, and the truth has finally reared it's ugly head. Thanks TR, you make it all worth while.

• For me, I knew I was fated for a life as a nerd in he fifth grade. We had to write an essay about what we wanted to be when we were adults. I wrote a nice essay on how I wanted to be, "A comic book drawer". I had no idea how it was done, or what, exactly, they did, but I wanted to do it! My teacher felt I should have picked something else. I told her she was wrong. She told me she didn't think it was a good occupation to have. I disagreed. I just began my own comic book company in December 2008...now my fifth grade essay has come true.

• I was talking to my girlfriend and said the words "eh, i just do it for teh lulz" out loud. That's when I knew I was beyond help.

• The day my 6yo daughter told me vibranium came from Wakanda and was used in the manufacture of Cap's shield.

• Yo, this is my first ever TR contest, woohoo! Too many, but the the first time where it definitively stuck out was this one time I went out and got drunk. I started chatting up this girl by recounting "that my favourite episode of TNG was the one where Geordi reconstituted the dilithium crystals and Wesley snuck some anti-matter aboard a ship for a training exercise". You'd be surprised just how much Star Trek is like sex repellant.

• When I first heard the definition of a nerd.

• I have always loved comics and cartoons, etc. I think I had my first inklings that I was a nerd when I was about 8 years old. I was fighting with another kid about who knows what, but I was trying to establish myself as higher than he in the social pecking order by bragging (that is, lying) about who my father is. Now most kids would say their dad is a police chief or some famous rock star or actor. But not me. In my efforts to sound superior I distincly remember bragging 'Oh yeah? Well my dad is Mort Drucker!" Mort Drucker used to draw and write the Hi and Lois comic strip. Suffice to say, the other kid was nowhere near as impressed as I thought he'd be. My solidification of Nerdliness was finally confirmed a few years ago when I appeared on Space: The Imagination Station and showcased my Batman collection, which occupies an entire room in my house as well as my home office. At least the calibre of comic characters increased over the years.

• I demanded to have my bedroom redecorated in a Harry Potter theme for my tenth birthday, and my grandma, who had taken me to go buy new bedding said, "But honey, Harry Potter is going to go out of style." The salesperson looked at me and laughed. I told him he looked like Draco Malfoy (this was before the movies came out, mind) and invited him to the party I was having to celebrate Harry Potter's birthday.

• i finally read through the other entries and realised that debate is ALSO nerdy. so today would be the day i truly knew exactly how nerdy my life has been. i'm not sure how i feel about that...

• I vote for this because it's awesome. And I would so respond the same way.

• BTW i'm the one with the zombie t-shit and the hat

• hey rob,greetings from argentina, these are my nerd moments pick one: 1)high school, first year, i was an undercover nerd, so i was with the popular kids, one weekend we go out to hang out, the we cross a comic store and i go in and buy some comics for sale, then every one ask me D'YOU READ COMICS?? and I said yes and there goes my reputation... 2)finishing highschool we have a graduated trip to the mountains, one week alone with out parents and with schools from all country(it's a tradition) and I take with me my MAGIC:TG deck to play alone, so sad... 3)this is a nerd hangover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=debor0CCJwA

• I was probably destined to be a nerd from the moment my parents actually considered naming their unborn daughter "Indiana Jones." My personal defining moment, though, would probably be teaching myself to raise one eyebrow on command when I was seven, because I wanted to be Spock when I grew up. The expected Vulcan-transformation didn't work out, but fifteen years later, I can still do the eyebrow thing. Actually, that--and acting out the battle on Endor's moon with my sisters in the forest behind our house around the same time--probably set the tone for most of my childhood.

• I never had the chance to not become a nerd. My parents took me to the theater to see Star Wars at the age of 1. It's been over since the beginning. Years of watching Star Trek, and movies like Krull and The Black Hole with my dad. I didn't dress as a princess for Halloween, I dressed as Wonder Woman and Princess Leia.I played war with the boys during the summer, and was allowed to play He-Man at recess. Always being She-Ra of course. In my teenage years years I tried to hide the nerdiness, but I eventually gave up. I think I started admiting that I was a nerd in my early 20's. I am proud of my nerdiness, and I will admit that I can be a bit of an elitist jerk at times. But I a happy being a nerd. For Christ's sake I cried during the new Star Trek movie! (It's sad, I know). At least I know I'm not alone. I know all of the TR readers are out there. Now if I could just find a guy that's not intimidated by a nerdy chick....Ah, the search continues.

• It was around my 8th grade graduation. There was going to be a ceremony and a dance afterwards. Leading up to the day everything was going fine until I learned that the day and time just happened to coincide with the airing of the series finale of Star Trek: TNG, my obsession for the last few years. You have to keep in mind that this was 1994. There was no DVR, no Hulu or torrents, and no way of catching this on a rerun until years later. All I had was a crappy VCR whose timer worked as well as sercurity at Arkham. By the time graduation ended I already missed the episode so figured I may as well go to the dance (plus it gave my parents peace of mind as to were my priorities were). I was so mad about missing the show and worrying about it recording that I couldn't enjoy the fact that I was slow dancing with almost all the girls. (I later learned that another girl was planning on telling me she liked me and I missed out on possibly getting my first kiss at a more decent age.) Luckly I got home and found out it recorded just fine. I spent the next two days watching that episode over and over again. After that my friends and I spent hours discussing it and nitpicking the episode to death, from what we liked about it to the bullshit. I may have graduated as a young man, but that is when I became a nerd.

• For sure? The time I got beaten up to save my GameBoy (the original version). I was 8 or 9, already socially awkward due to being shy and a girl who preferred playing with the boys toys to the girls (at least in the conventional way. One time I also made a female friend of mine cry when I told her I hated her because she wouldn't let me play with her brother and his cool Ninja Turtle toys.. I went home early that day, but anyway). I was walking through my school's playground on a weekend with my GameBoy, playing Link's Awakening and chatting with some "friends". This girl, twice my size and in middle school, comes up and reaches for my GameBoy. I asked why, and she said she wanted to break it. She pushes me down and proceeds to kick me and tries to wrestle the GameBoy out of my hands. I valiantly defend the GameBoy, basically by curilng up in a ball to protect it while she tries to wrestle it out of my hands and not defending myself from actually getting beat on. And those friends? They stood back in a circle around us, and I swear they were laughing at me. Finally, the girl gave up, I think because someone thought they heard some adults in the area. My parents didn't even stick up for me, I got in trouble for having the GameBoy outside :(

• P.S. I'm still so into cartoons, it's embarassing.

• Virgin at 28. Who knows? Maybe, we can help each other out.

• "Actually, let me try and do this IN POINT FORM" You just got my vote.

• I was 21 years old when I played D&D for the first time. I was in the Navy, and stationed in a very remote place with nothing to do. My friend Sam noticed my slow descent into insanity, and suggested we play a game to pass the time. Out came the 2nd edition books, character sheets, and multicolored dice. Before you knew it, my 18/00 strength fighter was cleaving his way through ogres. It's been a long time since then, but I've never gotten over the appeal of the pencil and paper games, and the worlds of endless adventure they opened up to me. Ask a friend to play D&D with you sometime. They'll thank you for it later.

• This is one contest I knew I had to enter. I've had so many, it's weird to think of a moment that I <i>wasn't</i> one. You probably meant the exact pinpoint moment in my life...but, like yourself, I can't remember the exact moment. However, perhaps my earliest memory of outcastdom (I know it's not a word!) was watching "Tiny Toons" (and despite what the haters said a few months ago, the show, though undeniably flawed, is still awesome). One episode featured Fifi La Fume. As I watched (and liked seeing) her slink across the screen, it sort of became clear that fitting in was a pipe dream never to be fulfilled.

• My final varsity debate. The motion was 'Special Needs Children Should Have Separate Schools'. I turned it into a Mutant Schools vs the Mutant Registration Act debate. I guess that's when I realised, even though debate was an integral part of my life, I'd rather be remembered as the one who knew which side the heroes took in the MCW than someone who actually knew the economic situation in Guatemala. Thanks mum, for giving your daughter the right priorities.

• I believe it happened the moment some asshole broke my glasses while showing how great a sportman he was by acting like a baseketball game in elementary school p.e. was the Final Four Championship game. I wasn't born a nerd, but thanks to p.e. and fascist sports assholes, I was created one...

• I did the same thing, only mine was to fill up the water-dispensing web shooters from a box of Rice Krispies and squirt my friends at the lunch table.

• I guess it was a bit of a gradual thing, liking toys after everyone else had given them up to chase girls, hanging out at a comic book shop, playing 8-bit Nintendo games years after they were popular. At this point I still had aspersions of dating, smelling good and generally trying not to offend the Opposing Sex. Ah, youth. Anyway, I was checking out a Robotech book with some really cool technical art of transforming fighter planes I found on the gaming shelf, not knowing what gaming was except that only nerdy weirdoes played it. The longhaired gentleman in spectacles behind the counter asked me if I played. "Me? No! I'm out doing…sex. And stuff." He invited me to a game night, and when they guys picked me up, he gave the book I'd been eyeing in the shop. (First taste is always free…) So next thing I know I'm sitting around a table full of nerdy freaks, wondering what the hell I was doing there. I'd brought my cousin, (just in case) and slowly over the course of the night we had more fun (and Mountain Dew) than I would have thought possible in a group of complete strangers. We made jokes that night that we still reference today. And even though my cousin quit going after a few weeks, it stayed with me, and I stayed with them. I still have fond memories of those guys, and those games, many years later. But it was one of those nights, that I realized it. Sitting around, making Monty Python Jokes, making references to subtitled Japanese animation, and angrily arguing over our characters, I realized this was it. I was Home. I never fit in anywhere before like I did here. All the things that I always hated about myself in the normal world seemed to make sense here in this little circle of friends. And now with the internet, I've found that there are more of us than I'd have ever guessed. And that can be home, where ever I go, as long as I can get on a computer.

• The exact moment, and I mean <i>exact</i> moment, that I realized I was a nerd was 5:00pm Mountain Time, Wednesday, June 21, 1984. I was in the summer between eighth and ninth grade and had taken my girlfriend to see Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, which had been playing at the local mall theater for a few weeks. Although I liked science fiction in general, up until this point I had considered myself only a casual fan of Star Trek Meaning, I watched it in syndication as a younger kid and knew all the major characters. That was about it. I remember seeing the first Trek movie in the theater and falling asleep halfway through and as for the seminal Star Trek II, I didn't bother watching it until it was on HBO. So at this point in life, I walked into the theater to see Star Trek III considering it just another movie to watch (and possibly a place to make out with my girlfriend) during the summer. No more, no less. So the movie was plodding along up until the scene where Kirk and his crew turned on the Enterprise's self-destruct sequence before abandoning the ship to the Klingons. At the scene where the Klingons got to the Enterprise's bridge and at the exact moment the self-destruct timer reached zero, by pure coincidence the hourly charm on my calculator watch beeped 5:00pm and then the Enterprise exploded. There was just something a little too visceral about my watch beeping at that exact moment, and I sat riveted to the screen for the entire rest of the movie, despite my girlfriend's best efforts to pull me back down into the dark seats for more clumsy adolescent kisses. "Stop a minute," I protested. "Oh my god…the Enterprise actually blew up! The Enterprise! Did you see that? And did you hear my calculator watch go off at that exact second?!" "You sound like a big nerd." She said in more than moderate annoyance. "Yeah, I guess so. But that was the Enterprise! Kirk destroyed his own ship! That ship was famous. Is this gonna be the last movie? How can there be a Star Trek without an Enterprise?" I went on and on. We eventually broke up about three months later, but I was hardly broken up about it because by then I was spending all my free time memorizing over the spec sheets for assorted Federation and Klingon vessels as described in my newfound hobby: FASA's Star Trek Role Playing Game. Looking back at that afternoon in the theater, all the warning signs of my ostensible nerdery were in place: The crooked smeared glasses, the semi-greasy hair, the calculator watch, the affectionate girlfriend I was ignoring and, most importantly, the intense emotional reaction to a major event in a science-fiction movie. All it took was the little confession for me to realize that, yes, I was a nerd, and I didn't care one damn bit.

• I had Digimon cards, when everyone else had pokemon cards.

• In fifth grade, we had to write a poem. Three stanzas, four lines each, abab rhyme scheme, regular stuff. I wrote ten stanzas describing in vague detail the evils of the Yeerks from the Animorphs saga, how Visser Three busted onto the scene (and I quote), "worse than a boll weevil," and the valor of Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias, and Ax. I don't need to tell you that no one else wrote even one more stanza than was necessary. can I get a woot for the Animorphs?

• I started being a nerd before it was socially accepted to be one. I was nerd baptized at birth, when my parents bought me the phantom menace you-can-read-and-write book. Painstakingly i tryed and tryed again to spell bantha. As a child i was different than my other kids my age. My friends liked to play sports, and i liked to stay home and create mass scale lego star wars battles. since then i have evolved my nerdiness. For my birthday i set up 8 computers for an epic warcraft 3 LAN battle with my friends. When i heard about star wars in concert, i rushed to order my tickets. During break at school, i go to onemanga.com and just read for the duration. I make Pokemon sprites as a hobby. My brother and I created created a game called "Super Hero Game" where we pretended we were a bunch of different super heros. We had like 300 different super heros. I cringe when people refer to AT-AT's as at ats. I once made a little child cry because i corrected him that darth vader cant use force lightning due to his cybernetic implants. I used to contribute regularly to wookiepedia. I read star wars insider. i have collected, with diligence, the entire New teen titans run that started in 1984.

• I come from a long line of nerds. My father is Star Trek loving engineer. I used to play D&D with my older brothers as a kid and watch tapes of the original Battlestar Galatica with my sister. This put me in sort of a "nerd bubble" where I never realized I was a nerd, since I lived with nerds and hung out with nerds at school. My computer skills made me a hero in High School when I networked the computers in the library and installed Marathon. When I went away to college, I moved into a four bedroom apartment with three other roomates. One night in my first week there, I was in my room doing homework and one of my roomates was in the living room with his girlfriend. She made a comment about some ofthe comic books I left laying on the coffee table to which my roomate responded "Yeah, you gotta see this kid; he's a huge fucking nerd. You gotta see all the cartoons he has on DVD." (My roomate didn't know I was home and within earshot). He then made some other comments about the comics books and the Final Fantasy poster in my room. I felt lke Louis, Gilbert and the rest of the Tri-Lambs and he was an Alpha Beta. My "nerd bubble" I was in had popped exposing me to what I was. I should note that my roomate and I got along great once he realized how handy it is having a nerd around. (Constant stream of new video games/consoles and Starcraft LAN parties.)

• I can't even remember not being a nerd.

• I studied philosophy at university. I caveat this to demonstrate that the following is not a product of academic immersion. My long held suspicions of nerd-dom were finally confirmed in college after years circumstantial evidence when, struggling to sleep one night, I began converting binary, octal, hex and decimal. Some people count sheep. I count base-n systems.

• I recently got to dance to Kraftwerk playing "Robots" whilst Dressed as a Borg (at Bestival). I am 50 and us nerds weren't cool when I was young. A nerd is for life - not just for Christmas.

• Greatest. Comeback. Ever. Hmm I'm really liking a lot of these stories...

• Lucid dreaming to play Mario. That is truely awesome. 0.o

• Wow that's just so sad, I don't even know what to say to that. :-(

• It was probaly when my mom dressed me up for my first day of second grade in some church dress crap and I proceded to pretend play Dragon Ball Z with a bunch of boys. It could also be when I nicknamed all my Pokemon after Greek philosphers. There was also this moment in high school where I relized that about half of my friends were /b/tards. I also was a dedicated listener to the Dr Demento radio show from around 7 years old.

• Nice! Do you also shelve books in front of books, so that the ones in front stick out over the edge and the ones in back become forgotten?

• Reading over these various testimonies, I realize I'm not much of a nerd. Especially when compared with folks who do things like read every Wikipedia summary of every anime ever made with an Aspergers-like attention to detail. In high school, I was never cool enough to be part of the nerdy crowd. Once Sega Genesis went the way of the dinosaur I stopped playing video games, and had no interest in rolling dice. What I did have, and still have to this day, is a fetish for nerdy guys. It took me years to figure this out. One day I sat down and realized that all the guys I've dated or crushed on have been obsessive about gaming, into computer building and programming, and slightly on the spastic or anti-social side of the spectrum. I love nerds. I can't get enough of them. My very first crush was on Egon Spengler of the Ghostbusters, and it just escalated from there. What can I say? Nerds are the best sort of people. They are passionate, awkward, exasperating, and beautiful. I'll take the guy sitting in the corner reading a book, or quoting Monty Python while flailing about like a loony over the standard frat boy or muscled jock any day. I love geeks.

• I personally realised I was a nerd from the second grade, when for show and tell I would bring in Ray Harryhausen movies I could find and we watched as many sinbad movies as possible. But my acts of nerdatry in my neighborhood were legendary even before this. In morning care before school we used to turn the room into a zoo. Some where bears, some were foxes, I was Godzilla. In kindergarden people used to play house in the play area with the gerbil and the fish tank. I played mad scientist.

• Jane Eyre has this effect on ALL female, high school aged literature nerds. I did the exact same thing; and developed a raging crush on Mr. Rochester. I haven't been quite the same since. And, ah yes, the endless Buffy marathons with friends. Good times, good times. Male nerds will never know or understand this particular sort of joy.

• I begrudgingly second. It's like a John Hughs movie without the 80's jams or Molly Ringwald Oh, well. Maybe next week.

• The year was 1988. I was a chubby three-year-old in pink My Little Pony feety pajamas. My brother had just entered the Terrible Twos and like many older children, I tried my hardest to get my parents to pay attention to me. It was tough going. It was even worse when my father brought home a magical glowing box that he would stare at for hours on end. Now, I do not remember the exact events as they played out, but it probably involved me tugging on his shirt a bit, inquiring as to what this very interesting glowing box was. "This is a computer. This is DOS. It can play games, see?" And so he typed in a magical string to start up Chuck Yeager's Flight Simulator. It was SO COOL. I could never get the hang of landing the plane, but crashing in so many marvelous ways provided hours of entertainment day in and day out. My father grew tired of me demanding he start up programs for me and so began teaching me DOS commands. Being three, my chubby little fingers would often hit the wrong keys. The computer would then tell me, "Bad command or file name." I thought this was the height of hilarity. I didn't even understand what it meant, but "Bad command or file name" was so glorious I would apparently run around screaming it at the top of my lungs before shrieking with laughter. At that, my fate was sealed forever.

• I think I've always known I was a nerd(in the genes-my dad is a huge comic book nerd obsessed with the supernatural), and when I got glasses in the first grade and realized that the world wasn't fuzzy the rest of my peers and family(who didn't already know) made the discovery themselves. Retroactively, it must have been the moment when I was 3 and showed my dad I was so proud of myself for being able to read(taught by a great aunt) that I read the first pages of a He-Man vs. Superman comic that he had bought for me(because I was into he-man and superman, expecting me to read it when I got older). Many instances for this realization-when I was in first grade and my school put me in the second grade reading class(continued until I was in fifth grade)... Going to a comic shop every week with my dad and being super disappointed when Marvel's "What the..?!?" wasn't in yet... I made a parabolic listening device for my science fair project from a microphone, a metal mixing bowl, and a tape recorder from an old VIC20(or a TI-81, can't remember which)... Pretending I was a hacker on an ultra-cool laptop on the aforementioned VIC20... Beyond childhood, the most definitively nerdy moment of my life was being 16 years old, getting my first non-paper delivery job and using my first paycheck to buy a used Gameboy Pocket(the first gameboy I'd ever owned) just to play Pokemon: Yellow(i used a later paycheck to purchase a lime-green Gameboy color). I've also found myself discussing Magic: The Gathering at work with people who played the game ten years ago in high school(i work at a casino). Me and a group of friends pantomimed iconic Magic card artwork while throwing around a miniature football behind a club(instead of trying to hit on hot punker chicks in the club). Also, telling people I started playing Magic when Fallen Empires came out and feeling superior to them if they started after me. Not to mention my three years spent as a Juggalo, one school year of which was spent going over to my cousin's house after school and setting up his cd player in his mom's driveway while we danced around and threw water on each other pretending it was Faygo. This was eighth grade, and I'm pretty sure I missed out on losing my virginity at 14 because of that.(i grew up in a slutty neighborhood, and those same sluts walked by us on a regular basis).

• I knew I was a true nerd when I considered buying a Star Trek uniform in the style from The Wrath of Khan because I couldn't fit into my Classic Trek uniforms any more. I realized my body no longer resembled the tv Kirk and had taken the shape of the movie Kirk.

• also more recently... I paid a company $500 to dress up like Batman (keaton-style) to hang out at the cocktail hr of my wedding. His only instructions...drink and mingle. If he was asked why he was there he had to reply "I know him, were friends". Having Batman casually enter a conversation with a beer in hand bringing up "that time with catwoman" was epic. Im also named my 1st daughter Ripley after the movie "alien". (sorry for the multi post!)

• I knew pretty early. My dad took me to see "Star Trek : The Search for Spock" I had never watched an episode of trek, I didnt even see "Wrath of Kahn." But I knew who Spock was. I NEEDED to know where he was...and why he was missing. It was serious. When It was all over..I turned to my dad and said "Im glad they found him...I missed him". I was 6.

• One must obtain pure state of mind during reading comics to fully grasp its awesomeness.

• That's... kinda beautiful, actually!

• I know her in real life, and I can confirm not only that, but that she's become quite a nerd since she started dating Luke. She'd had tendencies before that, but he's definitely put a positive influence on her! Ugh... screwed that up before.

• It's funny that you ran that Pokemon wedding story recently, because it reminded me of my geek epiphany. I was in sixth grade at around the time that the original (American) Pokemon explosion was winding down. I was still downright obsessed though (ex.: took a survey of my class for the first movie over who they thought would prevail and why: Mew or Mewtwo, as if there was any possible resolution other than hand-holding and feeling-sharing but I was young and idealistic; sue me), but because it was still faintly tolerable among my peers, that wasn't enough for immediate geek designation. Around that time too, I had a huge crush on this popular girl. I was the shy, harmless, nice guy that every brought their problems to but was never really popular outside that. It so happened that one of the people who liked to lay it on me was that girls best friend. I don't know how we got as close as we did but soon enough we were familiar enough for me to shamelessly and constantly profess my (middle school) love for her friend to her/the pain of not being noticed/etc.; looking back it was pretty pathetic. Anyway, one day in the library, after one of our school's book fairs, I was reading the shit out of the new pokemon guide book I got, and god bless her, when she saw how excited I was about it, she let rant for a good 40 minutes about all things Pokemon. I remember her asking me all the filler questions you ask when you don't know about something but want to appear interested. I'll never forget her leaning over and telling me that she thought exeggutor was kinda cute, and how she squirmed a little but still stayed when she saw some of her friends come in. So after that convo, my feelings for her started to change and I began becoming attracted to her, while becoming less attracted to her friend. My moment of geek revelation was when I asked myself why they started to change. Turns out that Pokemon was a powerful enough force to alter my relationship with someone; the fastest way to my heart was not through the stomach, but Pikachu. And it was enough to make me bite the bullet and ask a girl out for the first time. We lasted about a year (an eternity at that age) and ended it amicably, as we remained friends. What's more, Pokemon matured me romantically/sexually. No longer were looks alone able to make me fall head-over-heals for someone. There had to some hint of shared interest, a willingness to share interests, or at least some baseline hints of compatibility. This is why I can never look down on people from geeky love stories.

• oh and we knew the dragonball evolution movie was gonna be a bust, but it's still amazing in the whole cheesy way, if you can get past the fact that it's definitely not based off the manga

• I know her in real life, and I can confirm not only that, but that she's become quite a nerd since she started dating Luke. She'd had tendencies before that, but he's definitely put a positive influence on her!

• hmm...i think my moment was when i was buying DragonBall Z mangas and actual glass dragonballs and other various merchandise online for my boyfriend. as i was waiting for them to arrive in the mail, i realized i was more excited for them than my boyfriend! or when we dressed up to go see Dragonball Evolution opening day XD just a couple months ago for my 19th birthday i had my mom make me a dragonball z birthday cake!

• Of course you couldn't beat E. Honda in Punch-Out! because he's a Street Fighter character!!!

• At least you didn't yell "Fuck you sir!"

• That's great... I had a cat named Torquamada from the Nemisis books!

• *huggles* We've all been there. God knows they've tried to medicate me too. Robb, give this man a t-shirt. He deserves it more then any of us.

• How could you NOT know who Pokins was??? You just lost street cred bro!

• Sad but true... when I was five and in Kindergarten (YEA ROSSMOORE!!) I told my teacher Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes was my uncle!! Not the actor, Maurice Evans whom played Dr. Zaius... no no... but the damn dirty ape himself! I got to bring a letter home to my folks because of that!! Also there were jokes about a monkey's uncle but I didn't get those until much later!

• I first realized I was a nerd in 3rd grade, when everyday I would come into school with a bag full of action figures which I would then proceed to fill my "cubby" up with (which I continued doing until my Punisher figure was stolen). It was also the year in which got in trouble for reading an issue of Wizard during class and corrected the teacher when he said that Man-bat was a mutated Batman.

• Unless the guy was talking about Curzon Dax, the ambassador. Of course I've never seen the episode...was the chick hot enough to turn a guy straight?

• Oh, shit. I fucked up. Please disregard the above post It wasn't "the moment you became a nerd". That would be when I was born. My parents fucking met at an Ed Wood movie marathon, my dad codes Perl, thinks Pat Boone's metal covers album was good(and I do too, in a NarmCharm-y way, possibly related to being in the school band and loving orchestral covers of awesome songs), and owns Buckaroo Banzai, Escape From NY, and Manos on DVD. And my mom was the one who recommended Snow Crash to HIM! No, when I knew I was a nerd... hm... this type of stalling doesn't work in print does it? Neither do rhetorical questions? Well, thanks for telling me. Well... * When I got into manga: First time reading Jing: King of Bandits. * When I had my Ghost Rider action figure fight my Han Solo action figure(the fact the Han figure was twice the size of the Ghost Rider figure probably helped him win) * the first time i wondered if pirates would beat ninjas (Ninjas usually, if the Straw Hat crew was fighting the Naruto people, Pirates.) * first time I saw Legos, and made a starship for Frodo and Captain Mal's space adventures * When I took my towel to the Hitchhiker's Guide movie * When I perfected my Torgo impression * When I got in trouble for reading The Shining n school in fourth grade(took me 2 days to finish) * When I got into Yu-Gi-Oh in second grade... and am still "into it" as a high school freshman. * When my parents used to show me and my brothers MST3K and Dr. Who * When I tried to count the people on the Marvel 25th anniversary poster I got from my dad and realized I could name about 2/3 of them * When I saw the Muppet Movie and realized, during "can you figure That?," thought, "Holy shit, that's where the music for 'Gonna Be Your Man' came from!" And the nominee is... * When I mastered my Torgo impersonation! To be honest, it was moe when I first used my Torgo impersonation, and was faced with a big heaping pot of "What the fuck are you doing?" After a few days of testing my Torgo impersonation, I realized, "Holy fucking shit, no one knows who Torgo is!" That was more of a "When I realized how big of a nerd I was", because I already knew I was a nerd. Holy shit, I knew.

• If you were a girl I'd marry you.

• When I noiced that I was fapping to Legend of Zelda porn.

• Agreed. Just like reading the Revenge of the Fallen FAQ.

• I'm past college and haven't been kissed yet...

• Back when I was a young'un, I didn't know that watching Star Trek TNG and listening to classical music wasn't normal. Or wearing anything other than a baseball cap. It seems that the hick public school in the middle of a cornfield (I'm not joking) that I went to had an overdeveloped sense of conformity, and I definitely didn't adhere to their rules. I was in 3rd grade and we moved there in October. I knew I was a nerd a few weeks later when I wore a beret to school and was teased mercilessly. Incidentally, 3rd grade was the year I got glasses too. Over the years, they always found new things about me to make fun of, whether it be the frequency of which I had to blow my nose, or the music I listened to (it seems country is the only cool music in the world). I even buckled under at one point and tried to fit in (thankfully, it didn't last long), but it didn't matter. I had few friends, and only two long-term. It got bad enough that my parents eventually enrolled me in a private school. Now, I'm 23 and have recently been released from a mental hospital. According to the doctors, I'm a pre-schizophrenic and now have to be on anti-psychotics. I'd be a liar if I blamed it all on my public school experience, but those years from grades 3-8 made me a large part of who I am today. It certainly made me a lot more stubborn and individualistic, which are two qualities that I value a lot, but it didn't instill me with a lot of fond childhood memories. And dammit Rob, if that doesn't make me worthy of a t-shirt, I should stop taking my medicine, break into your house and steal one of yours, whether it's an official TR shirt or just something out of your dirty laundry. This is completely within the realm of possibility of someone who is CERTIFIABLY FUCKING CRAZY.

• No, I think he saw his mom's concern and decided to play it up and milk it for more time to just hang out and read comics.

• Probably about the 6th grade after watching Revenge of the Nerds and realizing that, yes all I do is think about sex. It wasn't like I was hitting puberty or anything.

• In middle school my group of friends and a group of my ex-friends had an all-out, fistscuffs flying, nerdrumble over the rules to a game we made up which combined the Star Trek CCG and the Star Wars CCG. We were all sitting in the office (except Jeremy Smith who was in the Nurses' Office because he lost a tooth during the fight) explaining to the DARE officer, the principal, and the school counselor what the gigantic, violent fistfight in the cafeteria was all about.  You could see absolute incomprehension in their eyes as we gibbered and yammered about B and C list star trek/wars characters and obscure fictional equipment for hours on end. I think they asked a lot of questions because they were trying to pin down exactly what drugs we were on or what they needed to ban.

• " I get this feeling of, that girl is too pretty to be nerdy! She must be faking it!" Yeah, the thing is most nerdy guys will assume that an attractive girl could easily 'blend,' and will thus leave nerddom behind. So attractive girls are, unfortunately, suspect.

• So the moment I figured it out was junior year of high school when I was telling my parents how busy I was, listing off the events in my schedule. Including, marching band rehearsal, choir practice, dnd with my friends, the comic book i was inking, and an ifgs meeting, followed by the performances of my school play. My parents looked at me like I was crazy. Dad asked when I was going to fit in time for my AP class coursework. I never questioned being a nerd again.

• My whole life was spent somewhere in the murky area at the edge of dorkdom. TNG was like church to me, but when it was over I was running out to go swim. I used the get in heated debates defending the Sega Genesis against Super NES nerds because it had far better RPGs than the Super Mario variety; but when they went physical, i won. I could read a a college reading level in elementary school, but had a new girlfriend as often as new sci fi novels. That definitive moment though, it came very late for me. I was twenty-one. I was enlisted in the Marine Corps, and was one of the more physically inclined of my platoon. This particular day, we were listening to some "motivated hard charger" talk about something that we were supposed to care about. My mind though was busy comparing the similarities and differences of The Foreverwar and Starship Troopers. When it came time for us Marines listening to the speech, everybody gave the usual guttural, monosyllabic grunts: Rah!, Urr, Yut!, Kill!, But I did not. Nope, not this guy, I shouted Woot! at the top of my lungs. It was only noticed by a few, and Understood by even less. To those who did understand even, it was worth nothing more than a slight chuckle, but to me it was a moment of realization. The nerd part of me had always been suppressed, but in that moment It was the dominant trait, It surpassed the Jock, the Ladies man, the chauvinist alcoholic. It was that part of me that shined through when I was pulled out of my subconscious. From then on I no longer fought those urges that welled up form time to time. I entered the realm of table top gaming, the world of Manga, and all of those things I had shunned for my early life. I had always been bubbling with thughts of Sci Fi and fantasy just below toe surface, completely hidden form the ocean of testosterone drenched normalcy that surrounded me, but from then on I embraced it, and I never looked back. I was also never promoted again...

• Well, I think I've always known, or at least never considered myself NOT a nerd. But one of the more concrete proofs of it would probably have been the first time my bookshelves collapsed under their own weight. It wouldn't be the last time, either, and I don't think I was even 15 yet.

• I am not a nerd...nerds are smart. BUT...I do have an extensive knowledge of the X-Men, a massive collection of comics-related action figures, the entire series of Robotech on DVD (collected well before they became cheap), multiple brands of technology with "Bat" before the name and a pink (well, fusha) Flash symbol t-shirt. This makes me a geek, and proud of it. First true moment I realized I was a geek? Probably when I was selling my old G.I.Joe figures (I know, I know, don't hate...I feel bad enough in retrospect). I needed money because I was 20 and it was either sell the figures and make $400 bucks or get a job. As a lazy 20 year old, I chose to sell my childhood. So I got together all the Joe figures, lined them up, placed them with their weapons and accessories and took some photos. I then packed them in a duffel bag and brought them to the comic store that said they wanted them. I went into the back with the owner (who looked a lot more stressed out than I thought he should given that he sold funny books and alien statues all day long) and set them up so he could judge them. He noted that some of them were broken (hey, what can I say? I played with the fucking things!) and then told me he'd give me $400 for the set. Keep in mind, this was 1999 and I thought that was pretty good. So why does selling my Joes make for the moment I realized my geekish leanings? Because when the guy offered me the money, I turned to him and said, "Throw in those two Star Trek model kits I saw out front and you got a deal." Oh and then I went to see The Matrix. A grand Geek-Day indeed.

• it was 1981 and i was 13. I insisted on a star wars themed bat mitzvah. HAD to have it. Would only agree to have a band that could play the theme music. Everything was black white and silver. The guys thought i was cool and my mom still gives me crap about not letting her have any flowers for the centerpieces. Its still my proudest moment... Being raised up on the chair as the theme music played. Oh yeah, that was classic.

• Rob, if reader opinions mean anything then I'm casting my vote for this.

• I've always been that girl that hangs with the boys and that's perfectly fine with me since we all had similar interests. When I was getting my divorce I started to hang at the local bar with my little sister alot because she was also going through a breakup. She was always calling me a dork but I just attributed that to our age difference, I'm 33 and she's 24. The same way kids think their parents are lame, I thought it was just generational. I also have to mention that I make friends at the drop of a hat, but have absolutely NO game when it comes to scoring. I never realize when guys are hitting on me and have to be several Yuenglings/Jagers in to hit on a boy. Yes, unfortunately, I am that girl. One night, however I was talking to a guy and things were going well. He was digging me when I somehow got off on this tangent about how I never really bought that Chakotay was into Janeway because he was way hot and she kind of sucks when this guy stopped me mid sentence to say.."Umm... Yeah, I'm not really into Star Wars" and walked away. Star Wars??? Really? I was pissed that I got dissed and by such a douche!!! Ouch. The reality of the dating world set in after that and I was seriously bruised for a while. Luckily I'm dating a boy now who loves Bruce Campbell as much as me. Iguess it's a start.

• When I did the trifecta in 7th grade, went out (and kicked ass) for quiz bowl, got 2nd in a chess tourny and tried to play dnd.

• I always knew, but it was especially obvious to me when I turned down a date from someone I was interested in because the guy in question misquoted <i>Firefly</i> while asking.

• My big moment was when I was 12, my friends and I read during every recess, but when my friends moved away that just made me the outsider girl who read all the time, so my teacher and parents decided that the way to make friends was to not only to forbid me to stay in the classroom but to also ban me reading my own books (my mom would check). I totally broke down in the teachers office, and cried for the rest of the day. Before that I had just done the same thing as my friends, reading good stories, and obsessing about the characters like kids do. But suddenly it was a bad thing, and that is why I count my days as a nerd from there, it defines the start of my saga, obsessing over things my parents frown upon. The worst thing is not that it took away the only shield against the hell my life was, with kids who probably won't ever read as many books in their life as I had then, but this has in long term ruined my relationship with books, I can read them, but I don't think I will ever be as good a reader ever again as when I was able to read a book a day. I am 20 now, taking an education which will enable me to continue to university should I wish so, and even my nerd friends never read for fun, while I prefer to read English books to Danish ones. Whenever I read a Danish book it reminds me that for 3 years I could not read in school.

• Sick after only a half day of not eating? Pussy :p

• I've always known I was a nerd. I'm into everything one would consider "nerdy:" anime, manga, comics, sci-fi, etc. I thought in algorithms, finished most of my sentences with ";" and whenever someone (made the mistake of) asking me about something, I would explain it using any knowledge of science (mostly physics) and comparisons to nerdy topics (ie. Star wars, comics) etc. Heck, even when my friends are down or in need of "serious" advice, without a doubt I would take the prime examples of nerdery to explain things to them or try to cheer them up ("Even superman has his downs, but you gotta be like him and continue against all odds!"). However, it was during Summer school that I realized I've crossed the boundaries of a regular nerd into a Supernerd. It was that day that I realized that I'm the long haired, glasses wearing, electrode-using supernerd that Red encounters on his journey to reach the Elite Four. I was taking 2 classes, a circuits class and a differential equations class. Somehow, both teachers decided to tell a joke in the middle of class for no apparant reason. And somehow, I was one of the very few to laugh hard at both of them. The math joke was as follows: "I can prove to you that a Ham Sandwich is better than love by using Math. Are you guys familiar with the the Cummatative Property? (a<b, b<c, therefore a<c) Now, say a = Love. and c = Ham Sandwich. Now, what is greater/better than love, and what is Ham Sandwich better than? We'll I'll tell you now, nothing is greater than Love! and a ham sandwich is better than nothing. Therefore, A Hamsandwich is better than love" I proceeded to laugh, and then went home to tell everyone I could. Now, i have told the world (and by world, i mean topless readers). My life is now complete.

• The day I found this site and started visiting it as often as a free porn site!

• When I was 13, I spent the better part of a week laying on the couch with my eyes closed and listening to the Jurrasic Park soundtrack writing a new movie set to the same soundtrack about a school for superheroes with a secret entrance in a national monument and a fight scene in a cave full of chains. Yes!

• Summer Camp - week #1 (co-ed) - High point: played with girls and lots of boobs. - Low point: none Summer Camp - week #2 (male only) - High point: discovered Robotech, my first rpg. - Low point: none One year later Summer Camp - week #3 (co-ed) - High point: played Robotech - Low point: Too busy rolling Robotech characters for all of the other male campers then to play with the girls and thier boobs. In a nut shell my ah-ha moment was when I realized that I passed up real fun with girls to roll god-damn robotech characters. I could of had my hand on a boob when I was trying to explain what melee action was. AAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

• That suppose to say "sitting all the way in the back." Sorry.

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