Geekfest: Could There Be a More Beautiful Name? by Lisa Ann Sandell

Lisa Ann Sandell is the author of the lyrical The Song of the Sparrow, which has earned many starred reviews. Her vivid debut novel, The Weight of the Sky, was also well received. Her next novel, A Map of the Known World, comes out on April 15, 2009. Check in later today to have a chance at winning both The Song of the Sparrow and and ARC of A Map of the Known World in a Geek Fest contest!

Geekfest: Could there be a more beautiful name?

Cardboard. Marigold yellow and white. I remember a marigold yellow and white cardboard box filled with kitty litter, or some other granular substance that looked and felt and smelled a lot like kitty litter (minus the actual cat poo). It was a Chanukah present from my parents, the best one ever. A cardboard box filled with kitty litter and fossils. FOSSILS! As in, fragments of dinosaur bone and trilobite imprints and ancient plant remains. OMG. A box of FOSSILS buried in kitty litter! And it came with a little guidebook, a brush, and a magnifying glass. I couldn’t imagine a better present, not for Chanukah or my birthday or Christmas or National Digging Up Dinosaurs Day—if only that were a holiday.

Well, as soon as my parents presented this magical box to me and I tore off the dreidel-covered wrapping paper, I began picking through the bits of gray, slightly smelly pieces of gravel, or litter box filler, excitedly unearthing piece after piece of prehistoric treasure. I flipped through the book; identified each piece I found, carefully dusting off the microscopic specks of dust; and stuck a small square sticker on whatever flat surface I could find. I painstakingly labeled those stickers with neatly drawn numbers, then pulled out a black and white freckled composition notebook and wrote the corresponding number alongside the name of the artifact. 1. Dinosaur bone (late Triassic – late Cretaceous?). 2. Trilobite (early Cambrian – lower Paleozoic), etc. Finally, I lovingly stored each fossil in a long, rectangular red velvet case, which I stored in the drawer of my night table, at my bedside, so I could examine and caress my precious finds whenever I wanted.

Oh my goodness, I was in geek heaven. A special corner of geek heaven—DINOSAUR geek heaven. And I couldn’t have been happier. Of course, I couldn’t let on to anyone I knew outside my immediate family that this was the best gift I’d ever gotten. In fact, I’m not sure anybody outside my immediate family even knew about my affinity for dinosaurs, aside from one or two bffs. And I didn’t get any less geeky as I grew older and moved into high school.

There, I was a full-fledged geek: top in my class in calculus, a chemistry lover, and…in the marching band (yes, I went to band camp). But I did everything I could to mask my geekiness. I didn’t necessarily succeed at camouflaging myself as one of the non-geeky, but not for lack of trying. I tried to dress trendily (fail), I tried to cover up my good grades, and I tried to convince myself that marching band was cool. Uh huh. Because to admit to geekiness was to admit to weakness, to loserdom, and I certainly wasn’t prepared to do that. At least not willingly.

Once I got to college, however, everything changed. There, I found that to be smart, to have “geeky” interests was actually cool. It was like four years of opposite day. And gradually I began to embrace my closeted geeky side. I learned how to recite the prologue of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English from memory; this bumped me up the geek-o-meter by about fourteen thousand points. Suddenly, I was kind of cool. I majored in medieval English literature and focused on Arthurian legend. Girls who love the mythology of King Arthur are not often considered cool, but in my college English department, it wasn’t even a question. The research that went into my senior thesis led to my second book, Song of the Sparrow. Snap!

And when I left college, suddenly, I realized, the geekier one was, the better. The more I read, the more I knew; the more Star Trek I watched, the more I had to talk about with my friends. Now, as a tried and true geek—still a space and dinosaur lover—and a fan of Battlestar Galactica, when people ask me if I watched the original Battlestar Galactica series (which I didn’t), I feel a pang of anxiety because maybe…maybe I’m not geeky enough. Ah, how things change. For the better!

So, I say: Geeks, stand strong. Wear your fossil-loving, dinosaur-hearting sci-fi nerdiness like the badge of honor that it is! And, geeks, unite!