Chapter 1: First Contact
Age four. The socket had two holes. My mother’s knitting needles were metal. The needles went in. Something invisible and magnificent pushed back. My parents screamed. I sat on the floor thinking: “What IS this, and how can I use it?” Other children touched a hot stove and avoided it. I touched 220 volts and went looking for more.

Chapter 2: The Tube Years
While my peers ate crayons, I was inside our valve television. Black and white. One state-controlled channel. Unacceptable. I added a second. Then a third. Not yet old enough to ride a bicycle unsupervised.
My first radio was a valve receiver with a magic eye - that green tuning indicator that opened and closed like a luminous cat’s pupil. I did not listen to it. I took the back off and stared for hours, trying to understand how a glass tube could know where a radio station was.

Chapter 3: The Ceiling Incident
Age seven. First integrated circuit. I knew it needed power. I knew there was power in the wall. What I did not know was that a transformer is needed between mains and a chip rated for a few volts. The IC objected vertically - launched to the ceiling, leaving a black stain that stayed most of my childhood. The lesson was not “do not do this.” The lesson was “do this correctly.”

Chapter 4: The Diagnostic
The dictionary says: “over-intellectual, obsessive, introverted, lacking social skills, spending inordinate time on non-mainstream, highly technical activities.” No inaccuracy found. I dock one point for implied negativity. Being called nerd is not an insult. It is a clinical observation. And I am terminal.

Chapter 5: The Name Change Incident
Registry office. Completed form. Legal name: just “Nerd.” Like Cher, but useful.
“You want your legal name to be… Nerd?”
“It is already my name. I am making it official.”
“Sir, we cannot process this.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I am not doing this.”
I considered appealing, then realised it would take time from a kernel module I was compiling. The state can call me whatever it likes. The internet knows who I am.

Chapter 6: Decades And Counting
Knitting needles to valve radios to ceiling-bound ICs to microprocessors to single-board computers to custom Linux kernels to debugging WiFi at 3am for strangers who will not provide logs. Tools changed. Voltages changed. The obsession did not.

People still call me nerd. They are correct.

Not pride. Not defiance. Clinical fact. I do not care what people call me - as long as it is clear they are calling me. I do not care about tone, aggression, or insecurities. Insecurities are overhead. I care about facts. Religiously. Exclusively. Facts are either verified or not. Everything else is noise.

The ceiling stain is long gone. The knitting needles retired. But the four-year-old thinking “what IS this” never left. He just got better tools.

(No ICs were harmed writing this. One was harmed in the sixties. It is still on the ceiling.)