Late Bloomers

From the middle of my teenage years, I was tracked to pursue science. This decision was largely made for me based on my abilities but not on my desires, given that in the French educational system, this was considered a privilege and an honor. I stuck to this track through college and graduate school--not so much for want, still. And here now I find myself a chemist, and I'm fascinated by the culture I was inducted into.
During a long and pleasant conversation with a good friend, himself a PhD economist, we broached the subject of being late bloomers. The science world seems overwhelmingly populated with them. I'm not so much curious about the "chicken and the egg" question as about the consequences of this to the culture of science. But I will digress just long enough to share a quip I once heard from a physicist: "Are physicists socially inept because they are physicists, or are they physicists because they are socially inept?" That discussion is for another blog.
Speaking for myself as a late bloomer, I never held hands in junior high school, never kissed in high school. In college I found out that being smart was a liability in the dating game and that it intimidated most boys, compounding my shyness. My parents thought me condemned to spinsterhood or lesbianism, I think, and they were overjoyed when they found out I was dating someone, overjoyed until it turned to fear that he would dump me.
Now, at this place and time, past the growing pains of my twenties, I see there are many of my ilk. Competent at analysis and at public speaking, our social interactions, friendly or intimate, are peppered with adolescent behaviors. And if this long adolescence seemed such a burden, I've been thinking lately what untold pleasures it now delivers (hopefully): the maturity to fully enjoy certain firsts, the palate to savor learning the exquisite intricacies of making friends, getting close, the joy of waking up a grown-up and shedding the innumerable awkwardnesses of a long-lived pubescence.