"I have gotten the evolution thing for forty years (I'm48)"
If you 'got it', what made you 'get it' in the first place? Aye, there's the rub...!
"I grew up on National Geographic specials"
You haven't lived, until you've been raised on the BBC's "Wildlife on One", Sir David Attenborough's epic "Life" documentary series. As well as ITV's "Survival" series in the 70s & 80s, and "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau", as I was.
"and I bought it hook line and sinker"
And what, pray, made you 'buy it, 'hook, line and sinker', hmmmmm? The facts presented in such?
"until I compared it to genesis, and both can't be true, so I choose Genesis."
Funny. It was reading Genesis in my youth, that made me decide how I should think (as I do to this day): The two conflicting descriptions. And the clincher: A talking snake.
But then, simple things please simple minds after all:
'Americans hate complexity'
-Stephen Fry, "Stephen Fry in America"
Which is why I watch nature documentaries to this day. To say nothing of scientific ones like "Horizon":
http://freeonlinedocumentary.com/the-illusion-of-reality/