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Let’s face it, readers are at least a little bit geeky. And I don’t mean you Opera Book Club, Joyce Carol Oates, or Nora Roberts fans (I continue to slam them, knowing there is no chance they are reading this right now). I mean real readers of real books. You know, the kind who read (or write) a book blog.
That geekiness doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. I began liking to read because in my early elementary school years the readers were the smart kids. And I very much wanted to be one of the smart kids, especially when I learned in the 3rd grade what “straight A’s” meant. What started out as purely academic and competitive turned into something more. I got hooked on all the wonderful stories out there.
As I got older and being smarter made me less popular I hung onto reading (which, it needs to be said, my peers were dropping it as fast as they could to become “cool” or a reasonable facsimile) because it is a solitary but never lonely activity. It’s an excuse to be alone with your thoughts and a clearly identifiable activity which doesn’t make you (that) weird. Parents don’t hound you for reading too much. You can opt out of the latest innane schoolyard game quietly and without embarrassment by sitting on the grass with a new volume. If you’re home on a Saturday night you’ve always got something to do.
If you’re reading others don’t hang out with you because they think you are too smart for them (and therefore boring) , not necessarily because you’re a loser. Or they call you “bookish” which sounds suspiciously like a compliment given to less social, but reading kids. In school the smart kids are somehow allowed more leeway in the social awkwardness category (actually in life, for those of you who have ever met a brilliant but painfully awkward MIT grad). There’s at least one positive thing about you - usually a way to get homework copied, or the answers on a test.
Or it’s possible that these are all the reasons I’ve constructed to make my inner geek feel better.
{Full disclosure: I’m a little defensive lately. My best friend got married in the last of the weddings for this season (what a relief) and we didn’t make it to rehearsal dinner before the “When are you getting married?” questions started. I’ve mentioned before that reading keeps me sane and my choices this week are no exception.}
I’ve had my anti-bride rant already so I’m moving on to bigger prey. In a long hot summer filled with wedding after wedding (really it was only three, almost four, but it seemed like exponentially more) I’ve become increasingly frustrated by social expectations being laid at my feet. Everyone wants to marry me off.
It still amazes me how rude some people can be. When are you getting married is not, by any means, an innocuous or polite question. And yet it’s completely socially acceptable. Even if we excuse the blatant invasion of privacy there are issues with the semantics. Firstly there is the “when” of it which implies there is no choice not to - it’s pretty clear that this is not a question of “if” after all. Secondly there is the fact that the questioner even has to ask the question, which implies that you’re taking too long (the poor, frustrated souls, I really feel for them). This questions belongs, along with its sister when are you having kids, to a society where people had no choices in the matter - matrimony and childbirth were inevitable - and frankly, they had nothing better to talk about. I for one think we’ve moved past that and our social manners should evolve as such. Unfortunately it appears that I’m in the minority on this one.
