If cheerleaders had been cool at my high school...

...then I probably would have been one.

Since it was actually harmful to one's reputation to be a cheerleader -- the lowest on the food chain, so to speak -- I chose not to affiliate myself with that sport, even though I secretly and so desperately wanted to participate.

Instead I was officially involved in National Honor Society, chorus, yearbook, and computer club as well as peripherally involved in whatever trouble or interesting things I could find to do after school so that I didn't have to take the bus home. I had my geek clique, but I wandered over to wherever I felt like wandering whenever I felt like doing it. In a totally wallflower capacity, of course. I just enjoyed observing, as is stated in superlative form in my 8th grade yearbook. To be fair, I was on that yearbook committee as well and had hoped to be added to the girl with the most socks superlative so that my picture would eternally be next to the boy I crushed on super hard (but whose name I didn't mention in my crush post). I still own probably 100, if not way more, pairs of socks, but I am also still very observant.

Despite the fact that the twins who I crushed HARD on (also not mentioned in the crush post; and I even got one of them to lay is head in my lap in front of many witnesses while I got the other one to sign my yearbook stating that I was his "funky cold medina" :) were in chorus, I chose to spend my entire high school career in computer club.

Yup, true geek. SysOp of the most popular and well-known BBS in my entire state at the time (I even had a key to unlock the system and to reboot it, oooooh) all four years, secretary freshman year, grant writer sophomore year, president junior and senior year, and resident girlfriend / crush for several members (officially dated four, crushed with too many to count) for all four years.

Computer club actually helped me to form social skills. Communicating in geek talk is still talking to others, and I didn't get a lot of practice with that in other venues. I also helped design and maintain a mailing list for a breast cancer survivor group, taught technology classes to senior citizens on Macs and PCs, did graphic design work for a local company who had an outreach program, and learned how to do hardware repairs and upgrades as well as software diagnostics on the school computers. Oh, and I also helped us go from 3 modems with local phone numbers to 8 modems with phone number exchanges that were a local charge for much of the county via my mad grant writing skillz.

Given the opportunity, I'd like to coach cheerleadering. Maybe cheerleaders for computer competitions? :)



Note: I had intended to speak about body odor in this post but I don't have time to speak about it. Please prepare yourselves for me to say that I learned from an early age to tolerate, accept, and in very many cases enjoy the body odor of people I know. Too busy to post that. I'd like to not have to work tonight, so nose to the grindstone and all that. Can't watch Veronica Mars season 1 final episodes if I'm working.