Am I Geek or ideal? Former.

If I have failed to establish a geeky image of myself until now, let me reveal some facts about myself from childhood that would surely help you make some progress, and my image to digress, from the ideal version that some of you may place me in (just imagine the scale of my expectations from you guys about my image amongst my readers)

One of the popular posts on my blog is 'First benchers'. But that wasn't without struggle.

As a kid, we siblings went to school on dad's scooter. I'm the youngest so I would stand in front, whilst the other two would sit behind. But, one of them was so slow, if I aimed to reach the class as early as possible -say 20 mins before the start of the school- she would get ready and be out of the home only at 20 mins or 15 mins to school. That was a bothersome thing for the kid wanting to sit at the first desk. I would impatiently wait for her on the scooter and take mental stress if someone else secured the bench. Each minute, I would silently keep wishing for her to get out of the home, so that we could start the journey.

Upon reaching the gates of the school, the moment my siblings helped me cross the road, I would run my way to the class. One day, I fell on the way to my class. After getting up, instead of taking small careful steps, I started running again. I even remember the sound of the lunchbox and my water bottle usually banging together in the school bag due to the fast pace.

After the school got over, dad took approximately 20 minutes to pick us up. 20 minutes wait is a monumental task for a child under the age of 10. I would ask my elder sister to sharpen my pencil and would then start doing my homework right away, standing in the security hut. 

Now, when I see my nephew postponing his homework to the last hour, I get surprised. Either I was more than necessarily dedicated, or he is laid back than usual or it is just a gender-based thing. 

Another thing which tested my patience during these 20 minutes (which sometimes extended to 30 minutes because of traffic or dad getting late from his own office) was resisting the visit to the canteen. I would crave candy every day. My siblings would teach me to control my urge. We struck a deal of having candies only on alternate days. It was the time when Re 1 would render you 4 candies of red and yellow colour. (I guess that was the only period in my life when I craved sugary things, I gained so much of control after that now I barely intake sugary/sweet foods.)

One thing is for sure that my parents paid full attention to our studies and never imposed household chores on us and never asked to cut back expenses when it came to education. But over-thoughtful we girls are, I would cut back on stationery costs on my own. I tried to write in a lesser number of notebooks. One of our teachers taught, "If there are only 2-3 lines left at the end of the page and you are about to start a new question, start afresh on the next page." I never adhered to this instruction. I would keep writing till the very end line. 

The barely used notebooks of the previous session were brought onto the next session by tearing the used pages. (It sounds like a 'Save trees' movement in today's day and age.)

If a teacher asked to bring some unnecessary charts to the school which I knew to be dispensable, I would skip telling my parents about it. Even as a teenager, my fellow-mates made assignments on beautiful coloured sheets and decorated it with what not, whereas I would simply write the project on simple white assignment sheets and bind it in a transparent file cover. 

This last one is on another note. A project of making a jungle or a zoo was assigned to us. While I made it with cut-outs of thermocol and used sticks to make fencing, my friends bought out readymade animal models from the market and placed it on the board. 

On the day of the exhibition I was on leave, so my friends told me the next day that I defied their expectations from me as they were feeling ashamed of my project and made me believe that mine was inferior. However, one guy from my class appreciated my project saying it showed the actual creativity. Till date, I'm in doubt if he was saying the truth or was just another admirer trying to get in good books.

Anyway, I succeeded in saving a few more bucks of my parents by using cut-outs. Haha.