I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 12 years old. That was quite some time ago. Before J.R.R. Tolkien‘s trilogy was consumed by every teen on the planet.

(Actually, I bought it almost by accident. No one I knew had read it or recommended it. I saw it in the neighborhood bookstore — remember those? — and I liked the cover. When I was 12, I often judged a book by its cover.)

I thought it monstrously long. I remember being astonished that Tolkien, in his forward, said his only regret was “the book is too short”. Now, of course, I agree wholeheartedly.

So, yes, I ingested LOTR with growing avidity, reading after reading. To the point that, in addition to knowing every plot point and far too much about the kings and stewards of Gondor, I could regurgitate at least three important historical dates of the Third Age.

Which I nearly always note to myself, all these decades later.

And we just passed by one of them.

The one we just went past, March 25 … is the date marking the unmaking of the ring of power and the overthrow of Sauron, as well as the end of the Third Age. Well, of course it is. Every school child in Middle-earth knows that one.

Another, only 10 days before, March 15, is the great military turning point at the end of the Third Age — the Battle of Pellenor Fields. Marked by the charge of the Riders of Rohan, the overthrow of the Lord of the Nazgul (slain by Meriadoc, the Hobbit), and the arrival just in time of Aragorn at the head of the black fleet.

And the third I have committed to memory (without trying, actually) is September 22, the birthday of both (!) Bilbo Baggins and his nephew Frodo Baggins. (It also is the birthday of one of my brothers.)

The Baggins twosome is at the heart of both LOTR and The Hobbit, of course. And Bilbo’s 111th birthday is a key point of the first book of the trilogy.

And, in perhaps the nerdiest thing I ever did (or will admit to) … when I was a 13-year-old freshman, on September 22, I wrote (with pencil, so as not to be a vandal) around my school these words:

“Today is Frodo’s birthday.”

(Frodo is the key guy, of course; his carrying the ring to Mount Doom; Bilbo was a silly person who blundered into history. A lightweight, compared to serious, clear-eyed Frodo.)

Back then, probably not one kid in 50 knew who Frodo might have been, but that did not deter me from leaving my mysterious messages.

So, yeah, I concede that remembering key dates in the history of something that never existed … that’s pretty deep in dorkism. But LOTR invited that sort of behavior that, decades later, left us hating what Peter Jackson did to the greatest novel ever written.