Beyond the Book: The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller

“People are going to judge you for all kinds of reasons for the rest of your life. Because you vote one way or the other, because you go to one school or the other, because you look a certain way. It’s a fact of life: you can’t make everyone happy. But you can make you happy.”

If you know me and you’ve read this, you probably just KNEW this would eventually be a Beyond the Book post. Because like I said, I can definitely relate to Maddie! I’m 24 and I have a book blog, but even more than that… I AM ADDICTED TO ALL THINGS WONDER WOMAN. (The first step is admitting it! lol)

It all started back in high school when I was in band and academic clubs AND athletics. I was always running from meeting to meeting and rarely wore anything besides club shirts to school. I had a free period at the end of the day and I always ended up in the band room before practice to do some practicing. I was like a machine. Even my band director was asking me why I was doing all this. And then, he called me Wonder Woman. And the name just stuck.

Because of that, I decided to see if that was a compliment or an insult. (My band director was good at “throwing slugs.”) After I did a little research on her, I became obsessed with her. I have a collection of her things like coffee cups, DVD’s, comic books, pajama pants, & even BLANKETS!
My fandom surrounding her got really bad when I got to college. Since I was so busy all the time and had to only read the books assigned to us, I needed some fairly short reads that could help to take my mind off the books for class. So one day I picked up one of my Wonder Woman comics and slipped it out of that little clear covering and sat down for a super entertaining read! Instantly, I fell in love. I began buying them any chance I got and ended up with a HUGE stack that I eventually had to send back home to my mom’s house because I didn’t have anywhere to put it here in me and the boyfriend’s apartment.
Then in one of my last classes of my undergrad year I took a class called “Script Writing.” Oh yeah I definitely loved it. We wrote scripts for all types of things like commercials, tv shows, and human interest pieces. But my favorite one was what we got to write for our final project. We were assigned to write the first 30 minutes of a movie over whatever we wanted. And what do you think mine was over?

You got it. I did my screen play on a Wonder Woman movie. I pitched that Hollywood was taking too long to remake another female comic book character movie (especially after that train wreck that was Catwoman smh) and so I wanted to take matters into my own hands. Obviously I won the little prize thing we had going on in the class. And of course, that sparked my new found love, fan fiction. I started writing some surrounding her and different villains. Something that I would love to see on the big screen. I WOULD share some with y’all, but that was just some stuff I did in my free time. It never was any good lol
Now I’m pretty sure all of you think I’m crazy, but I don’t care. In the end Maddie didn’t care that everyone knew about her geeky side, so I don’t care anymore either. My boyfriend knows, my family knows, and now I can say all my friends (real life and behind the blogging screen) know that I’m addicted to Wonder Woman. Btw, does anyone else find it hugely ironic that I love her and not Catwoman when my real name is Patience? (Catwoman’s name in her movie starring Halle Berry was Patience!)