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geeks/nerds/asd

I always had a very high technical aptitude and I have an encyclopedic memory. I don't have very many special interests but my brain just sucks up everything around me and remembers all of it. I don't study, my brain just does this on it's own without asking me about it first.

So I can hold a conversation with people on a very broad range of topics and I'm often far better informed than people would expect of me. People have always recognised this in me too, even people that don't know me very well will come to me with little problems, usually starting with the opening line "You seem like a pretty smart bloke, I was wondering if...." I also seem to have a talent for explaining things to people in terms that they understand.

So I'm usually very social when I'm out and I also seem to be quite popular, so not a nerd. But if you want your computer fixed, your tax problems resolved, your owner/operator's manual explained in plain English, or a plethora of other topics, then yes, I'm a geek.
 
When I was a kid I had 3 huge encyclopedias in my bedroom that I'd never opened, they were just handy to stack on top of each other so I could stand on and reach the higher shelves lol.
 
Outdated said:
I always had a very high technical aptitude and I have an encyclopedic memory. I don't have very many special interests but my brain just sucks up everything around me and remembers all of it. I don't study, my brain just does this on it's own without asking me about it first.

So I can hold a conversation with people on a very broad range of topics and I'm often far better informed than people would expect of me. People have always recognised this in me too, even people that don't know me very well will come to me with little problems, usually starting with the opening line "You seem like a pretty smart bloke, I was wondering if...." I also seem to have a talent for explaining things to people in terms that they understand.

So I'm usually very social when I'm out and I also seem to be quite popular, so not a nerd. But if you want your computer fixed, your tax problems resolved, your owner/operator's manual explained in plain English, or a plethora of other topics, then yes, I'm a geek.
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You sound like a honourary member of my family Brains like sponge's eidetic memories. I'm the most social member of my family. my brothers had or have no need for Friends. You could randomly grab a cousin, second cousin my family put them on Jeopardy, and they would do well. Paternal side
 
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Ronald Zeeman said:
Brains like sponge's eidetic memories.
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It's a bit like my comments on the thorium, I read a news story about it back in the 90s. Australia was the world's largest supplier of uranium back then and it was a political hot topic. With no reason for me to do so I still remember what I read 30 years ago.
 
Same here I read about nuclear 40 years ago did not realize how simple thorium was, I was more focused on fusion not fission. Now feel like a real dummy. Boy did we take the wrong fork in the road when it comes to fission. Can we retrace back to the fork and start again. I'M worried we as a society did too much damage and now are so scared of radiation we cannot go back. I'M frantically looking for the downside of thorium. closed thing was the use of HF to replenish the molten salt dissociating due to heat into fluorine gas, very minor. just watched a video of Japans nuclear accident. main concern was radioactive cesium getting into ocean. accumulating up the food chain No mention that it has a half-life of 30 years. that's what I call hype.
 
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Originally, a geek was a side show performer who would eat gross things. I think that test is heavily biased toward younger candidates. Should I take no credit on having programmed a calculator in math class because I didn't take after-school slide rule, or claim one for having learned programming on my own? The cultural stuff is just style, not substance, like the advertorial aspects of "The Big Bang Theory." I think the essence of nerdiness is has to do with the ratio of how many buttons one knows how to press on a machine vs how many buttons one can activate on humans. People are as mysterious to me as engineering is to most people.
 
Ronald Zeeman said:
my first calculator was an HP with reverse polish logic.got me through college
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I still have a replacement for the TI-36X Solar calculator that I used in high school & Navy tech school.
When I shopped for my then school-age kids, TI no longer had a non-graphing calculator with as many functions as the 36X (which is no longer made). I got them some old ones online.
full
 
Years ago, a geek was someone who walked around with a pocket protector in their shirt pocket in case your pen leaked ink. nobody writes any more they text I carried a calculator in my shirt pocket. I did not us a phone at work did not want to be responsible. For the largest fire Toronto would ever see a phone catching fire and starting paint on fire saw this once as a paint storage facility caught fire not too far from where I was living in college. 1976 I lived on Foch Avenue at the time that's another story.
 
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It called me a poser. Not surprising. I couldn't care less about Star Trek or Star Wars. I'm not a big fan of superheroes. I used to want to make animation for Disney. I've wanted to be a fairy, or a mermaid, or a friend of the Smurfs. I've never created my own video game but I've really wanted to for years. I've written fan fiction and done fan art but don't think I'm good at it since I usually closely follow the original creator's canon. And I'm not male. And doing homework when I didn't *need* to? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAROFLROFL!!
 
GrownupGirl said:
And doing homework when I didn't *need* to? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAROFLROFL!!
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I never did any of my own homework. I used to do all of my older sister's homework because she struggled but I never even attempted any of my own. Freak memory, I never had to study anything either, just read it and know it, so I never really had to do any work at school and it was pretty boring but I always got straight As in exams.

I spent most of my school life just sitting there quietly reading science fiction novels. I had a bit of a theory when I was a young man that perhaps part of the reason I found life so difficult was because I never learnt about having to try hard when I was a kid. I didn't know anything about autism back then though, but perhaps in some ways that theory also plays true.
 
Definitely nerd. Always was. Didn't really care who knew. (Couldn't have hidden it anyway.) Didn't waste time/effort trying to NOT be nerdy. Figured if people didn't like it, they didn't have to hang out with me. Didn't interact enough with casual strangers to call ATTENTION to being a nerd. Didn't know I was also autistic till I was 64 though.
 
I always had a good memory for facts and found it very easy to learn foreign languages. I did well at school in subjects where you read and just regurgitated the facts for tests. But I was not good at abstract thought. So things like algebra and understanding/interpreting poetry which don't rely on regurgitating facts were hard for me. My essays were just a string of things I read in the books and I couldn't interpret poetry, so I didn't do well in English Literature at all and got a D. For my other subjects I got a mixture of As and Bs. Even in maths I managed a B. I had a better than average general knowledge. Other people considered me intelligent, but I lacked self-confidence and didn't consider myself intelligent at all because there were many things I couldn't do as well as other people, and I was often slow to catch on in certain situations or to process - I always felt I was stupid around people.
 
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