How I Became a Nerd

I am such a nerd! I just joined facebook groups for all my childhood schools. I changed schools every three years, so this amounts to four schools, two by the name of Stovner.

Grades 1-3 – Fossumberget skole du fikk leve bare noen år... Set to the tune of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, this was the song my 3rd grade music teacher Liv Berg wrote and taught us to play on the recorder in the last assembly before the school was closed forever.

So we got shuffled to Stovner skole – grades 4-6. In the fourth grade I had a vision test and when I couldn’t even make out the gigantic “E” I was promptly given a pair of glasses with the prescription -5.5… in both eyes. And so I entered a brave new world. I could see – I could actually make out people’s faces around me and trees and flowers and puppies. But not only that, apparently now people could see me, too. I went from being a fairly generic kid (who was squinting all the time and literally burying her nose in her books… but still…) to becoming somewhat of a curiosity of a bespectacled child at age 10.

I became a Brilleslange – the Norwegian name for the Indian Spectacled Cobra (that snake with glasses painted on the back of its head) and the equivalent to the highly technical English term “Foureyes.” Other lovely pet names like Hanulf and Høna (the Chicken) were bestowed upon me – lovingly, of course, although I’m not sure what they had to do with my wearing glasses. But as the Norwegian saying goes, a beloved child has many names.

I heightened my visibility further when one day in a fit of devotion I decided (not my Dad, contrary to popular belief – this one was all me) to slap an enormous “Jesus loves you” sticker on the front of my backpack. I’m not sure what possesses a child to do something like that… perhaps this was a way to openly profess my faith without having to use words. Talk about making yourself a target! “Hey, look over here – I’m the Jesus freak with glasses – come get a piece of me!”

Then came junior high – grades 7-9 and yet another school. The summer before I entered Tokerud skole my pink plastic frames broke and I got my second pair of glasses. Only the optometrist must have accidentally grabbed a pair of coke bottoms instead of my lenses. Surely, these half-inch thick pieces of glass belonged on a couple of bottles somewhere and not my face?!

Starting school that year was different. They say first impressions last. And when you’ve got a pair of goggles the size of a small nation marching ahead and announcing your arrival anywhere you go, it is hard to catch up to that reputation. The first thing anyone saw of me were those damned glasses. And, I mean, how could you not? Here was this long, gangly beanstalk with these gi-normous spectacles balancing on her tiny face.

So I was given another pet name – S-Offer. This name translates to “S Victim,” the “S” referring to the top letter grade in the Norwegian grading system. And I was labeled smart. The Nerd. And now, my transformation was complete.

Oddly enough, I came to find out at this school making good grades was definitely not considered a virtue. In fact, at this school, making an S was the biggest sin of all… and I fell victim to it. My poor elementary school teachers led me to believe that everything they had taught me up to that point was for the purpose of making good grades in junior high. Only they failed to mention the hazardous consequence of that much studying: it would pretty much amount to social suicide.

First impressions do last. Even by the end of three years, when my glasses had long been replaced by contact lenses and I was much less awkward looking, there still must have been a big “S” stamped on my forehead. Even though I changed dramatically during these three years of my life, not much changed around me

Now, high school was another story altogether. At Stovner Videregående Skole, the last stop on my journey through the Norwegian school system, it was all new people, few of whom knew I used to wear the “S” brand or those enormous glasses. I started breathing again and quickly perked up. A very inspiring year-long hiatus in Sweden at an embattled religious educational establishment provided another shot in the arm to my wilting social career, and when I came back, everyone in my class was a year younger and a little greener, and I was on top of the world!

So I’ve gotten better at hiding it, but the nerd is still in me somewhere. Over a decade later it cyber haunts its old stomping grounds and says – “here I am – come get a piece of me!”