Having been bullied as a kid, my heart broke when my daughter came home from 3rd grade and cried that the kids were calling her a nerd and a geek because of her glasses. I wear glasses, her dad wears glasses, and 70% of our extended family wears glasses. It was no surprise she would need glasses. It was a surprise, though, that kids still resorted to calling other kids names because of minor differences. It shouldn’t have been. Children have been cruel to each other since the beginning of humanity.
Luckily, Dad jumped into action. He started naming famous people who not only wear, or wore, glasses, but famous “geeks” and “nerds”. The list included Steve Jobs, Bill Gates (can you use a sentence with those two names without something lighting on fire?), Teddy Roosevelt, Albert Einstein, J.K. Rowling, Stan Lee, My Little Pony’s Rarity, NASA’s Katherine Johnson – human computer, Nobel Prize winning Donna Strickland, and many more. We looked up famous geeks and famous nerds. We found super heroes, and super villains (Clark Kent, Harry Potter, Sue Storm, Wonder Woman, Velma Dinkley to name a few). It really is amazing how many of us have poor eyesight.
My now empowered geek went to school the next day proudly wearing her glasses. Of course, there was an email from the teacher in the next few days, concerned that my sweet little girl was calling herself a nerd. We told her teacher it was perfectly fine. She was owning it.
My hope is that all kids who are even just a little different gain the courage to own who they are. More importantly, I hope kids who would normally tease others for their differences see them owning it and learn to honor those differences.
Harriet the Brave 