Ink Stain

The Nerd Strikes Back

11:06 AM, 6/19/2007 .. 0 comments .. Link

As an eighth-grader I got busted down from advanced algebra to algebra 1/2 (no kidding, it was called algebra 1/2) for failing grades. A month later in front of the entire school, I was given a certificate for having the second-highest math score on a school-wide test. (Nobody was smarter than Paul Wonsewitz. Nobody.)

As a fifth-grader, they dragged me into an advanced class where we got to work on "computers." You put this floppy thing into a slot (after turning around three times, spitting, then rubbing a piece of metal to ground yourself.) Then things happened on a TV-looking thing that had two colors: black and green. They kicked me out when I played stupid. DOS? What's DOS? RAM is like my dad's Dodge, right?

I've run from being a geek most of my life. It didn't help that I was 5'2" until my junior year of high school. It didn't help that until the ninth grade I wore glasses WITH A THICK BLACK SAFETY BAND that looped around the back of my head. (Thank YOU, mother.) And it didn't help that I read through books faster than today's kids read the back of a video game box or super-size their fast food order.

Yeah, I'm talking about you, Fatty...

I've just been informed that last comment was insensitive and rude. Reading through it again, I suppose there's some truth to that, so I'll apologize to all the lazy kids playing video games who are getting enormously enormous. Don't worry though, I'm in the middle class, so the billions of dollars your health care is going to cost down the road rests squarely on my shoulders. I vote we take away their video games and make them pull cars around, thus helping them lose weight and reducing our dependency on foreign oil.

Anyway, it's taken me 34 years, teaching myself to program in Basic when I was 12, being in the Honor Society, fixing every damn family computer we've ever owned by myself, hacking a walkie-talkie with a coat hanger, playing in the pep band all four years of high school, reading "The Hobbit" a few dozen times and getting a 28 on the ACT without practice, or caring really, to acknowledge that I'm a nerd. A geek. Or as the ape-like bullies tenderly put it "Punching Bag."

It's a tough thing for me to do, admitting that.

I always wanted to be athletic and bask in the inherent coolness. Tried, even. I ran cross country and track. I played a year of high school basketball, but then got cut my senior year during tryouts. I played baseball from Little League to American Legion. I was never really great at any of it, but I tried.

Which is more than I can say for being a nerd, which came all too naturally.
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