Raised Geeky

Day 23 of the July Everyday Geek Challenge with Dia at The Lady Geek, 'Our Upbringings and How We're Geeky'.

Every 45 year-old man that comes through my line at work and sees my name-tag:

Hey, you know who my favorite actress is?

Gillian Anderson?

Yeah! I can't believe you know who she is!

I was named after her. My parents were a little too into The X-Files when they had me.

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When we were younger, AJ and I went through a phase of always having to coordinate costumes on Halloween. We were a flower and a bumblebee. We were both skeletons. We were Woody and Jesse. And....we were Legolas and Gimli.

He was Legolas.

I was Gimli.

I had a beard and everything and it was easily one of the best things that has ever happened. 

The funny thing is, at the time I was completely unaware of how funny it was for a 10 year-old girl to be walking around in a brown, fluffy beard with an axe. I was just thrilled to be dressed as my favorite character.

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When we were little and watching LotR for the first time, my mom banned us from two scenes: the ones with the orcs being birthed from the ground or whatever, and the one where Smeagol turns into Gollum. She said they were just gross and scary. I resolutely covered my eyes during those scenes from about age 7 through 12. My brother watched through the gaps in Mom's fingers our first time.

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It was a grand event, the first time I ever watched A&E's Pride and Prejudice. PBS was re-showing it when I was 11, and I stayed up till the shocking hour of 10:30 six Sundays in a row to see it. 

It was beautiful and funny, heart-wrenching and heart-warming. I loved it from the first episode, and have only loved it more with each new watching (which, honestly, has been 1-2 times per year). 

Also, Gillian Anderson did the little PBS introduction thing for it each week. So it was pretty much fate.

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How did geekyness bleed into your childhood? Were you raised by geeks? Don't forget to join the conversation on tumblr using the hashtag #everydaygeekjuly. Tomorrow (Day 24) was supposed to be our third vlog argument, but some crazy scheduling leaves us without a video (woops!) so tomorrow is a free day! Catch you guys Saturday!

Happy Thursday! xoxo