Call The Doctor

Nerd used to have awful connotations when I was younger. Nerd meant that you were a smelly loser and an ass-kissing teacher's pet to boot. You had an ugly personality and even uglier social skills. For some kids that was true, like the kid in my 9th grade class who always used his sleeve to wipe his nose, smelled like deli meat and liked nothing better to spend his recess reading from the Merck Manual of Patient Symptoms. Mind you, he's probably a surgeon right now, so I guess in some ways being a social outcast probably worked out for him.

As I've gotten older, terms like nerd and geek have become less troublesome. They have almost become badges of honor. Words that has been reclaimed and reshaped into a number of definitions beyond the meaning you took when you were younger. To whit, one of my own most-abused sayings is "I'm geeked", meaning that I am very, very into whatever we/I have just discussed. When you start seeing those words used in a positive manner, and turning up more and more in popular culture (like the latest line of Hello Kitty merchandise), you know The Cult of Geek has become a cultural touchstone. Nowadays, it's decidedly cool to be some variation of nerd or geek.

One of my favorite websites is Think Geek, with their delightfully tongue-in-cheek slogan: stuff for smart masses. It has all manner of geekish things that fourteen year old me would have publicly scorned but would secretly been really geeked about. Like the Laser Star Projector. Or the Fly-Goodbye Bug Tracking Gun. Or the Line Tracking Robot (which I first encountered at Robot Workshop before a TMBG show - but that's a whole other geek story).

Recently, I've come to accept that I am a nerd, even though I fought it tooth and nail in the past. Case in point: Doctor Who, a show I wouldn't have been caught dead watching in my teens has become one of my favorite shows in the past year. Entirely the fault of both Red and Sam, who kept bugging me to watch it, telling me "you'd like it if you gave it a chance!" I suppose this is what happens when both your husband and the guy who's your closest friend (outside of your husband) are both shameless nerds.

I've also realized that in regards my personal life, geeks are where it's at for me. Are you of above-average-or-better intelligence? Are you genuinely passionate about learning? Can you talk tech with me? On the same level? And not in a lame I-work-at-Best-Buy-and-assume-all-female-customers-are-stupid-and-know-nothing-about-anything-sold-here way. Are you a word nerd? Do you love words and language as much as I do? Do you get all my random music and/or cinematic references? Can you make me laugh until soda comes out my nose? Congratulations, you win. (For the record, my husband is a nerd. A WoW-playing-sci-fi-reading-horribly smart, too-smart-for-your-own-good, dyed-in-the-wool nerd. Amen.) All of my friends are somewhere on the geek spectrum. So are most of the people I look up to. It seems that being geeky is finally paying off. So if you suspect you could be a nerd, resist the temptation to fight it. You'll be richer for it.

Trust me. I know.