Do you remember the time in your life when the words "nerd," "geek," or "dork" were bad things? And do you remember how all you ever wanted to do was avoid being one or all of those three things?

I was always pretty smart. Good grades just happened without much effort for me. I never studied for tests, wrote papers at that last second, and completed projects the day before they were due. I most always got A's. I actually liked the lectures my teachers gave. That's how I learned.

When someone called me a nerd because I was smart, my response was always, "I can't really help it. I never study." That seemed to be an acceptable response.

However, when someone called me a nerd or geek or dork because I liked things like Star Trek and space and books, I became self conscious. I read The Baby-sitter's Club way after all the other girls my age had stopped. I loved the stories so much that I had to know what happened next, even though it took me only a couple of hours to read through the book. I hid the fact that I still read them. (Sometimes I still read them.) When someone mentioned how stupid Star Trek was, I would laugh and agree. Secretly, I thought how I couldn't understand why Star Trek was stupid. I mean, come ON. Space is cool! No? Oh.

Even as an adult, I found myself not making it really known how much I loved science fiction. I had a friend or two at work who understood it, but I still felt different, and for some reason, that still wasn't OK.

One day, two of my friends at work were starting to listen to these things called podcasts. I was so sick of what the Bradys were up to on Days of Our Lives (I listened during work) that I said I would give them a try.

The first one I listened to was called Buzz Out Loud from CNET. There were two girls on the show and oh my god, they loved video games! I loved video games! And! They also love science fiction and talked about shows I loved. This was amazing to me! They called themselves geeks on purpose and loved it. I loved it. (Molly Wood and Veronica Belmont? THANK YOU.)

Listening to Buzz Out Loud (and the 20 or so podcasts about the show Lost) actually made me realize how much I had in common with the those two friends at work. We loved all of the same things. We shared a cubicle and it was a every day occurrence to walk by and see us trying something one of us had seen on the science channel. (Did you know that duct tape holds the world together? Seriously.)

People stopped by all the time to ask us what we were doing. They seemed to love it. We were cool. Being nerdy, dorky geeks was awesome.

So, in case you don't know. I am April, I love video games and space and Star Trek and science fiction and that is awesome.