BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Different in other ways?

Interesting thread. Here are my comments

I don't talk to people from high school
I talk to people who live near me and that I have mutual interests with. My 20th HS reunion is scheduled for July 18-20. I was right on in my guess about the 3 events: Friday evening cocktail party, Saturday afternoon picnic and Saturday night dinner and dance. I got my wish and have an out of town bike race that weekend. The Mt Evans race is a much better use of $75 than the reunion nonsense listed above. BellaOnline ALERT: Raw URLs are not allowed in these forums for security reasons. Please use UBB code. If you don't know how to do UBB code just post here for help - we will help out!

Ok...High School friends - no contact at all and happy to keep it that way. If I want to hear stories of woe, I'll listen to the late news.
University friends - I still see a handful but we're not that close any more...most have kids and the couple that don't...live overseas.
We have friends of all ages...but now that you mention it...many are younger or older. Most people our age are raising kids...now that people are having kids later in life, many of our peers still have very young kids. (in their late 40s)
We love travel and have travelled to Botswana, Gallipoli, Crete, Corsica....lots of out of the way places. We never take coach tours preferring to do our own thing...I can't stand someone telling me, I have to have the pasta because I'm part of the tour group...We also, hate the hard sell souvenior shops that are part of most tours...30 minutes at the temple and 60 minutes at the tourist shops...
We're not recluses - I'm very social and love having people to dinner - we enjoy spoiling our guests. My DH is quiet and reserved - he struggled initially - feeling uneasy in company (he didn't know all that well) He's now fine and also, enjoys entertaining. In the last 10 years, I have enjoyed more quiet time - enjoying my own company more...really enjoy the odd solitary bath at the end of the working day...burning a candle and some incense and enjoying the quiet. So, my DH & I have ended up meeting in the middle.
I find our tolerance of noise and crowds has diminished...we now often seek out quieter locations to relax.
We've never been part of a CF group although, we'd certainly think about joining one - the NK group have not yet reached Melbourne. I suppose we have created our own CF group...including older people with grown up kids.

Maybe the scariest thing about me, is that for all intents and purposes, I'm quite normal - life and soul of the party when I feel like it, quite happy to do my own thing when I don't. Most people who meet me ask what I do for a living - when I say I'm a financial controller, they look at me and say "What?" and then "No way!!"

But I have been different all my life - maybe not so much socially different, but just that as my mother puts it, I always had an unerring sense of where I was going and what I wanted to achieve, even as a small child. And a lot of the time, that didn't involve following the crowd. Once I make a decision and set a goal, it's pretty much a done deal. I guess it does make me "different" if all my friends want to go to Mexico and lie on the beach, while I want to go to Nepal and sleep on the ground : if I went to work after graduating high school when every other person in my class went to university : when I wanted to race cars and speed skate rather than staying home and playing house : when I ride a raceboard rather than a normal snowboard : when I hang with the guys drinking beer, rather than the girls painting their nails : and when I said "no kids" and meant it. Might be different for everyone else, but it's just me being me, and I wouldn't change it for the world!

Yup, total weirdo here. Played dungeons and dragons in college (where I met Grey) read and collect comic books, listen to metal and hard rock, love horror movies.

Oh, and I actually wrote a custom version of one of those murder mystery games in highschool. My DH was there. I was a french maid and he was some troubled European count. Ah, the memories.

Fitting in has definately been a challenge, in fact I went to therapy for it.

Ahhh, comics. I have a huge collection of Elfquest, but not even people who are friends with me in this day and age know it. That being said, I think I'll pull some out and start reading...

I didn't fit in during high school when I briefly wanted to, and I certainly don't now, but I'm rather proud of my insane individuality.

Elf Quest! I have a friend who was huge into that series. One of my good male friends met her at a comic convention where she was cosplaying and started dating her there. Best decision of his life, as far as I'm concerned. I hear that she is CF, too. Ah, the world is small and life is good!

I love Elfquest! They've been promising me an animated movie since before I was in high school, and I'm getting impatient.

One of my best female friends is HUGELY into cosplay. I got her little brother into Elfquest, but it wasn't hard, since my friend introduced me to anime. Life wouldn't be the same without having watched Ranma 1/2 or Akira, although I haven't watched them in years.

DH isn't into ANY of this. I can't tell you how many times I've seen him shake his head sadly when I remind him that he married a total geek.

Celebrate geekiness! (I am getting really good at this whole hijack thing...)

Maybe we should hold an online-class on how to hijack message threads with grace and style. Example:

I remember being in HS in the early 80s and being a geek was not the in-thing. You were looked down upon with disdain, teased, etc. 25 years later, those same geeks now control your email, your bank accounts, your phone accounts, your connection to your internet -- all the important things in contemporary society today. Now That is the ultimate real life example of "Revenge of the Nerds"

Exactly, Duane! I acted as a bit of a mentor to a couple of teenagers a while back, and while they were smart, they kept getting in trouble and ignoring school. I tutored them, and they told me they didn't want to seem uncool, so I pointed out to them that a lot of the people who we thought were "cool" in high school end up as losers (I've seen the head football cheerleader at the local Wal-Mart with four kids with her and I doubt she works, and another guy who used to make fun of me recently made my McDonald's cheeseburger). I said I was a geek in high school - a well-known geek, but a geek nevertheless, and at the time I talked to them, I was making great money in a respected position. I made them realize that being smart is an advantage, and to not waste it by trying to impress people who ultimately won't matter.

They're now both in college. One's studying engineering and the other wants to be a psychiatrist.

GEEKS RULE!

(Now, who wants to help me write the curriculum for Message Hijacking 101?)

The jocks and cheerleaders that I sort of knew, I have no idea where they went. The odds of being a jock and succeeding in sports is infinitesimally small. The people I hung around with who attended my last HS reunion were fairly successful people. The "in crowd" people (jocks, etc) weren't there.

The position of power I have now, as a geek, is that I am the top technical-only computer person in the school system I grew up in. (ie I am not a manager -- but I don't have the personality for it). I run the email system for over 3,500 teachers/staff over 26 schools, and if problems arise between schools talking to each other or if there are problems with the Internet, I get called to fix em. Being a geek has been good to me, and pays well.


Right skill at the right time.

I'd be afraid to start a message thread about it, because we know that it'll be hijacked here