I get starry eyed in Pier One, Lowes, and TJ Maxx.
School always bored me to tears. That's why I always had a book inside my textbook or hidden in my lap. I don't know how I actually learned anything in class. It's a good thing I liked non fiction.
I guess I sort of pieced together my own education - in spite of being interrupted occasionally by my teacher, or having to put aside my book about ancient Egypt, psychology, or medical terminology to do my homework assignment on the capitols of each state.
This was back in the day - we had to go to the library rather than get online. I was checking out 7-10 books a week. Had to get a special permission pass to check out more than the maximum allowed. I read every waking minute - even at the dinner table if my parents were feeling particularly magnanimous. At the busstop, on the bus, till 2 am by the hall light, in the bathtub, etc. My parents had to practically push me out the door on the weekends and after school to make me play outside -though once I got out there, I loved it.
My mom saved all my gradeschool report cards and there are numerous comments along the lines of, "If Melanie would read her homework assignments as diligently as she reads the biographies of Henry VIIs wives, she'd have better grades in her government class!"
So - in a sense I was a nerd, if by that you mean the girl with her nose in a book constantly.
The cool thing is - just a few years ago, I found out something really touching about my great grandmother. My grandmother told me that they were very poor dirt farmers in southwest Arkansas, and she remembers her mother packing the men a lunch every day and walking about a mile each way to take it to them. She would put the food in two pails, and put one over each arm. Then she would grab her book, and read it all the way there, and all the way back. She knew the trail so well that she didn't even have to look up.
This was one of the few opportunities in her day or week that she could grab to read - and she loved reading with a passion.
She passed that to my grandmother, and my dad, and to me, my oldest daughter, and now her oldest daughter.
I think that's awesome.
