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Reading Was My Refuge and Greatest Assistant in Life
As an adult, I’m still escaping by sending my mind on daring adventures
Who was I kidding? I was neither cool nor popular back in grade school or even high school. I was a Class-A nerd. I was an awkward, introverted, book-wormish kid. I had few friends, albeit great friends — Stand by Me kind of friends. I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body. I was ridden with anxiety and fear.
Being a nerd today is no longer the horrible stigma it used to be. Guys like me owe some debt to geeks-turned-tech giants like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. They surfed the nerd wave to the golden beach of fame and fortune. The mainstreaming of comic book culture and fantasy fiction has afforded today’s nerds a new level of respect.
I wasn’t really into sci-fi or fantasy as a youngster. That, too, has changed. I can’t get enough of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, which puts me more into the fantasy camp. I was not much into comics or gaming, so I’m unsure what brand of nerd I’m considered. It was all about my love affair with books and being inside my head. Books saved me as a child and an adult.
It was about the 6th grade when I nerded out on reading Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. I was drawn to international intrigue — detective…
