I realised early on that "normal" people didn't seem to like me very much, but "weird" people liked me a lot. I didn't have a name for being extremely talkative, fidgety and imaginative at the time, but I knew that I got on especially well with other talkative, fidgety and imaginative people - and with extremely withdrawn, sullen people who geeked out about computers and trains.

I started to look for those people in a room. There were loads of us! We sniff each other out like puppies in a park. On my first day of high school, a girl came up to me and told me matter-of-factly that we were friends now.

In later life, the cool people in marketing weren't so keen on me, so I'd spend my lunch breaks with the nerds in IT. On the bus home, the goths and emo kids would sit next to me (in my office attire), from some primal sense of kinship and safety.

When I had a child who worried about popularity, I told them it was fine - look out for the weird kids; you'll find plenty of friends there.