I got this nickname because after my divorce I was living in a town of 200 people in rurual South Dakota. At that time, my friends and I would say, over pizza and beer, "I wish I could go back to school," but I was the one that actually did it.
As well, I announced to my friends (after my divorce) that I would only date men who were at least as educated as I was. They kept trying to set me up with friends of theirs who were, I can only delicately say, quite rural, and somewhat uninformed.
I learned from more than one failed relationship that one gets tired of hearing, during every argument, "Okay for you, Miss Smarty-smart. Miss college girl. You think you're so smart, don't you, Miss college girl?"
In any case, whenever my friends and I were out drinking, a serious, studious looking man would walk by, and my friends would say, "Hey, Geek Girl, there goes your Geek Guy!" and the name stuck.
Nicknames are funny things.
It didn't help that I partially paid my way through by teaching people how to use computers and setting up their new computers for them. Now I teach math, science, and statistics.
I don't teach computers, because I can't stand all the whining. Not from the kids, from the adults. (I've been coding in raw HTML since around 1995, and while it's true that I occasionally peruse lists of osbscue utilities to use on my computer AND I frequently work in COMMAND mode (formerly known as DOS) that fact is that when I hear someone, anyone, start to mutter or complain bitterly about the computer they are using at that moment, I start looking around for a window through which to escape.)
But I digress.
I'm nearsighted, but I can't wear contacts; so I wear heavy-framed glasses. I take them off when I do my evening Sudoku puzzles, and I have a bad habit of muttering things while listening to research findings such as, "well, that may be true, but I would like to see the data," or, "how did they operationalize their variables?"
I may celebrate the whole thing by putting a plastic pocket protector in the gel pocket of my new skinsuit.
I'm proud to be me.
...
