Thirteen

Sean has often said that to make me happy, just give me things that you'd give a 13-year-old boy. I suppose this is true. I'm a huge geek at heart. It's who I am. I don't care though. Why should I? I love what I love and that makes me happy. So now I'm going to think about what makes me that way. Here's what i have so far:

1. My love of sci-fi/fantasy movies. I am pretty sure I could see Lord of the Rings an infinite number of times and never get tired of it. I just can't. I love that stuff. I used to read fairy tale books when I was young. I remember a few favorite Irish Fairy Tale tomes. I'm also a huge Jurassic Park fan. This movie came out in 1993 and i think i saw it about 7 times in the theater. I just loved it from the beginning. Now, i have the music memorized so i don't really need the movie anymore but it still rocks. Remember that moment when you see the brachiosaurs for the first time? It was magical. They were so real. I think i literally gasped.

2. My love of all things space. I took an astromony class in high school and while I said "booorrriiing!" to all the physics of it, I loved learning about constellations, black holes and planets, etc. I remember taking my star chart outside and climbing onto the roof of my house to find all the constellations I could. Now, i hate seeing a cluster of stars and knowing that it MUST be a constellation but not knowing what it is. And i can't understand how others can be not desperate to know either. I have a few places on Earth that are my absolute favorite places to be, and on that list is the Planetarium at the Musem of Natural History. It is a dome of spirituality. I am engulfed amongst the stars and for a short time, can pretend that I am truly there. It captivates me. How people can stand here on our tiny planet and be satisifed with the small amount of knowledge we have about space and the universe, i will never know.

3. Going along with that, I am a Trekkie i guess, but my devotion is strictly to the Next Generation. I appreciate the original but it was Captain Picard who persuaded me to join him on his mission to go where no one has gone before. I believe i was 13 when I got sucked in. I would quote the intro while zooming around the planets before the credits and main theme started. "Space...the final frontier..." (I knew exactly when he came in, too. Right after we round Saturn.) I would then say the names of the castmembers, in order, as shown on the screen but I'd call them out beforehand, which is probably when my family experienced a bit of shame for me. But my sister Stephanie can't mock me because I helped her through the movie First Contact with the Borg. Anyone who's watched the series knows how pivotal this movie was. "You can't beat the Borg!!" Stephanie also gave me a small keychain with Star Trek sound effects and before I lost it, i would hang it up outside my bedroom door and insist people push the "deedee doodoo" doorbell sound like on The Enterprise.

4. I'm also a bit of a geography geek, you might say. I've always been interested in it. When i was in 8th grade we were studying U.S. History and learning the state capitals. I vowed to never forget this bit of information, through all the years of my schooling, and i haven't. In fact, it's probably the one thing i haven't forgotten. Go ahead, quiz me: Maine? AUGUSTA! North Carolina: RALEIGH! See? I'm a whiz. For Christmas a couple of years ago i got an interactive globe thing with a magic pen where you can touch areas on the globe and learn about them. Also, there's a game section where it quizzes you on the location of countries, etc. I love maps. It's kind of like the stars... I hate not knowing what a place or island or something is called on a map. I hate hearing the name of a place and not knowing where it is. If I had a lot of money i would TRAVEL. And eat at fancy restaurants. But definitely travel. A couple of months ago I flew out to Utah by myself. I had a window seat and takeoff (I almost just said "liftoff." yeah, because we were in a rocket. *sigh* I wish...) was at night so the city was a-lit. I sat with my forehead glued to the window and took in the sights, frantically tried to find my bearings before we got too high, and was utterly stunned when i could see the outline of the east coast. It always boggles my mind to think that I can see in real life what it looks like on a map. I tried to memorize the edge, the indentations and details of the coast so I could compare it to a map but i forgot it. Also, one of my favorite things to read is the atlas, but you could have guessed that by now.


So there are some examples. Wait a minute. You know what? I just read this post again and maybe I AM a 13-year-old boy, deep down. Now that i look back, I was 13 when i got sucked in to Star Trek. I was 13 in 1993 when Jurassic Park came out, and 13 in 8th grade when i developed my love for geography! Maybe I'm stuck at the age of 13!! What in the world? I guess there's more truth to Sean's statement than he knows, though I'm pretty sure there aren't any real correlations to me being a boy, except that these things are stereotypically "boy things," i guess. Still, that's really weird... (by the way, i didn't name this post until i read back and realized i was 13 for all of these things..)