Early onset-geekdom, or, A love letter to K.A. Applegate

SO. I will be conferencing this weekend and oh I know you're going to PINE and BALSAM whilst I'm away.

Probably not. But, in the event that you'll be all, Why hasn't Diana posted in three days? I HAVE NOTHING TO READ, maybe this will tide you over. I am about to get raw here, people. I am about to reveal deep dark secrets about my deep dark past. It goes something like, "Cuppa tea cuppa tea almost got shagged cuppa tea."

My point is this: Topless Robot's weekly contest. For those not in the know, TR is my go-to site for nerdy news; Transformers, Japanese perversions, STAR WARS, horrific fan fiction, comic book movies, etc. Rob Bricken's got it all. He also does a weekly contest, the prize being a TR t-shirt, and this week the topic was...What is the geekiest thing you created in your childhood? I entered, as I usually do, and did not win, as I always do. SOMEDAY ROB SOMEDAY. Anyhoo, as I was pressing "Enter" on my dear netbook for the entry I used (which, if you scroll down to user Menshevixen you will be able to read my embarrassment), I suddenly remembered AN EVEN BETTER MEMORY.

Let me tell you, if I had posted that one, it would've won. I even have pictorial evidence. See, when I was a wee person, my BFF and I were super-time Animorphs fans. We were heavy into that Applegate--we wrote coded notes to each other and used the title font style, we played at being members of the team and, as I recall, totally warped the use of the morphing power to where we could change into inanimate objects. We also drew a schematic for a costume for Halloween which, if I do say so, was awesome. It was an Andalite. Whose hooves would be portrayed by rollerskates. Green glittery eyeballs on a headband for the second set of eyes.

I do not recall which of us was supposed to be the back half.

Obviously, this never came to pass. BUT. This image exists to the present...I think. DR SHE BLOGGO, if I dig through my closet and come up with it, can I post it here? For posterity?

Yes, dear readers, I was an elementary school nerd. God looked down on me and said, Yea, I knew thee as a nerd before I formed thee in the womb, or something. Something important happened in my childhood--a bizarrely long-running series about children who could transform into animals and fight alien slugs--and the course of my life was set. From Animorphs it was an easy leap to STAR WARS, to fantasy series, to comic books. K.A., I owe you a lot. It could be argued that you are the reason I eventually got laid (as well as being the reason why it took so long). You are a big part of the reason why I'm a writer now, and a librarian. It is certainly your fault that most of my party tricks revolve around one-upping dudes about classical mythology and SW EU trivia.

And now as an adult nerd, I get the opportunity to shape the future of my dear smallest cousin, who is actually not that small. She's 12, and about eight feet tall. According to her mother, she reads even more than I did at that age. Well, you can guess what I did with that information--I started sending her books! Sorry about the state of her room, Aunt Maureen. She loves fantasy like I do, and so I keep grilling her parentals about this title and that, has she read X, does she have Y? and then send her things I think she'll like at Christmas and birthdays. Last birthday I sent the whole set of The Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce, as well as a Robin McKinley and a Karen Healey and a Neil Gaiman--my go-tos. And in the mail today I got a thank-you card:

Dear Diana, Thank you so much for the books you sent! I love them all (underlined twice), especially the Protector of the Small series.

THE COCKLES OF MY HEART, THEY ARE WARM. That is why I am a librarian, peeps. That right there. Is there anything more joyous than providing a person with something they will love?