I want to talk about nerds.I’ve been studying that subject recently. Nerds are indeed wondrously complex.
Don’t laugh. Writers and artists study stuff all the time. We soak up life with our sensory receptors.
We meditate on nerd-dom.And if this sounds like a nerd wrote it, I confess it. I was a teenage nerd.
I think most artists were nerds. If you had an artistic temperament, you were probably emotional and vulnerable. Now does that sound like the description of a jock? No, if you were that weird, you were a prime candidate for a nerd.
So, what exactly is a nerd?It’s hard to define, but most of us knew a nerd or two, at least in school. The movie “The Revenge of the Nerds” (1984) has a great cross section of various nerd types. Yet few of us would admit to being nerds ourselves.
I wanted more research, so I polled my neighbors:“Who me?”“Are you kidding?”“I dated a nerd once.”“The guys my mother wanted me to marry were all nerds.”“I was too quiet in school.
”“I was a jockette.”“I was a jock, but I turned into an animal.”“Why do you want to know?”“Are you talking to me?”Sigh.
It seems none of my neighbors were ever nerds. So, I broadened my polling (and here the names are changed to protect the nerds).Jenny said: “I don’t think so.
I was really smart. Third in my class. But I wasn’t popular.
”“Did you have your glasses, then, Jenny?”“Yep, with really big frames! Braces too.”Jenny, you were a nerd! Of course, it’s hard t.
