Originally Published 04/26/2024

Now many people use apply the word nerd to others for many reasons. A person wearing glasses, someone who is eccentric and different from others, someone who is intelligent, someone who is ‘out of step’ with the rest of the world or someone others have trouble relating to.

In my younger years it was also used as a derogatory term for a social outcast/misfit or someone low on the social totem pole that others tend to poke fun of to be mean or just belong. Many or most of these applications have been applied to me at one time or another by nearly everyone I know or have known. I even applied it to myself as a negative connotation.

            Lately many seem to apply it to others as a ‘term of endearment for their own oddness, “Most of my friends are nerds, I love those people”. The words that I immediately focus on is ‘Those people’ many or most of us cannot get away from singling out others even in our adult lives. I think we all try to categorize people whether we mean to or not. Maybe it helps us organize all the people in the world by classifying I don’t quite know, just that we all do it.

            Now what does the word ‘Nerd’ mean to me? I’d like to say that I’m proud to be a nerd but I cannot even finish saying the word before I start to cringe inside. I was either 5 or 6 when the word was first directed at me. I didn’t even know what it meant at the time which is silly since I was reading around 6 years ahead of my age. Part of me thought it was a compliment but of course when laughter was used with the word “What a nerd, hahaha” then the definition became clear at the time. I may not have understood the origins and meaning of the word but, its application was crystal clear. I have since derived meanings and shared them earlier.

            Now as a kid there were still kids even in my neighborhood that would play with me and I was very active on the playground at school. However, I was still at the bottom, last person picked on teams (not sure why I was always at least ok at sports), or was forced onto a team. I guess when word gets around that you are different and a little uncoordinated for your age, word gets around and you’re sort of poisoned to others unless they get to know you. And there were some that did and they at least most of the time left me alone and treated me like everyone else. My best friend growing up was unfortunately at the top of the social ladder and eventually we drifted apart as the social caste system takes over in 6th or 7th grade.

            Glasses, I mentioned them earlier and I wear ones that could (in the wrong hands) start a fire or murder some ants in the very least. I was without said device until age 8 in third grade I failed an eye exam at school and had to visit an optometrist or ‘optimist’ as I jokingly call them. I remember praying to God very very hard to pass my eye exam. I was pretty smart (too smart for my own good) and knew what would happen if I got glasses. So, I took my test and failed with what would become the best vision of my entire life 20/40. I say that because know my vision is something like 20/600. I remember being inconsolable in the optometrist office. I knew what was coming, worse than I had already been treated and I wish I was wrong but I wasn’t.

            I think the term nerd and 4-eyes were applied to me after I added some pretty nerdy looking specs to my ensemble. I guess I didn’t know how to pick glasses as I never wore them before. My parents believed we should all make our mistakes and learn from them and boy did I. Take a harshly honest person (ergo, my wife) with you and have them tell it to you straight, at least you will not look poorly in the glasses they say look ok.

            I for some reason in elementary school had a very advanced vocabulary and no one could understand me at times and that did not help. It was like speaking a foreign language that no one could understand and it put more distance between me and others. It was difficult finding pride in doing well in my studies as others were even mocking me for that. All I wanted was to be a ‘normal’ well-adjusted kid like everyone else. But the master builder had other plans for me. I was to be ‘me’ from the very beginning and I was fighting it even back then but I could not suppress who I was. This is a fool’s errand. We are who we are, nothing can change that. We may evolve and improve, but we are who we are. I tried running away from academic success but that only put more friction between my parents and I and as for my peers, well the teasing just went on. I remember there were a few bottom dwellers even lower on the totem pole than me, and I regret teasing them. It was like I was taking out my social rejections on them. It was a crude form of displacement and was cruel and I regret it and am sorry every day for my behavior.

            I remember in junior high at Rincoln Elementary (Go Roadrunners!!) I was posed a question seemingly about 700 times a day by seemingly everybody, unfortunately. That great movie (it is pretty funny even today) Revenge of the Nerds came out in 1985 and of course everyone said, “Hey were you in that movie, Revenge of The Nerds? You’d be perfect”. I’d just drop my head and walk away hearing the echoing laughter as I did so.

            Leonard Di Vinci was a brilliant scientist, designer, painter and sculptor. Well by the definitions I stated he would be a ‘nerd’ and yet he is an epitome of a Renaissance Man. If he is/was a nerd then that is company I’d like to be in.

            I was also born with musical creativity so this made me a band and choir ‘geek’ or nerd while in school as well. But I love music and always will. I was made for music like a swimmer was made for water, yet a swimmer garnered more respect in those days. Of course, anyone in a rock and roll band was cool but that was pretty much it. I just tried to do what made me happy and that was performing music well or singing well. I felt like I was doing something I was meant to do, until the catcalling would start. I remember being pelted with tortillas at every football game my freshman year of high school. For some reason, we got more acceptance as the years went by and my everyone matured.

            I remember one personal calling me ‘gauche’ in ninth grade. This of course means “socially awkward’ and though it stung it was highly accurate. I had been shunned for so long by so many that I really didn’t know how to fit in, even with other members of my tribe. It seemed I was even low-lying fruit in band. I would have to glom social skills of the few popular people that would (and still do) talk to me. If they only knew how much I wanted to be just like everybody else. Not unique, safely confirming like others and being treated like others. But that just didn’t happen. People became more accepting of me as I got older and mostly seem to remember me in a positive light from those older days. I sometimes wish I could be who they remember instead of who I am. I guess that is something we all battle in our lives, especially as we approach older age which is right around the corner.

            I guilty, I love to read and love science. Many others I know and have known do not. I like science because it explains a lot of the origins of everything. For some reason, I was born with an insatiable curiosity about stuff and science helps spell out a lot of it so I love that. It makes me a nerd, by other people’s definition. There is nothing I can do about this one either as I will always want to know why about a great many things and I read up on them a lot.

            One final area to touch on is my tastes in books and movies. I love, literature in all its forms and adore science fiction. This again forces the aforementioned label upon me. I started reading sci-fi, horror, fantasy and classic literature at a pretty young age (10). I still enjoyed the Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume and Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books at that age too but I became a bookworm and got picked on and at for it.

-aaa