As you can appreciate, something I never do is disturb people by telling them “I used to be a nerd” or joke, “Well, I’m a recovering nerd.” Because they get a furrowed brow and burst out, “But you’re not a nerd!” Not now. Not visibly. (Not much) Call me nerd proofed.
Last week I was in a bar on Main Street in Camrose. At the next table was another disguised nerd I knew, “Phillip,” with a middle aged stranger, who was, I judged, still a semi-nerd. Poor guy, he hadn’t fully “nerd proofed” himself as Philip and I had. But at least he didn’t look like someone out of that classic 1970’s Spot The Nerd poster. You may remember it had arrows: An arrow to white tape on his spectacles; another to his plastic pocket protector where he carried his pens, plural, another to his belt holster for his calculator… The implication being that a nerd would find a hack to protect his spectacles, and would protect himself from exploding pens, without first looking to see whether regular people used tape and wore a protector too. This from valuing his physical safety over needing any mental safety from following the crowd.
That detailed poster might be summarized by defining a nerd as a) intelligent, and b) doesn’t care about the crowd’s clothing and fashionable beliefs. Maybe from being oblivious, maybe from not caring. Just like the nerds on TV’s Big Bang Theory. I remember a guy at a science fiction convention wearing a button saying Go Lemmings Go! A regular person might not share the sarcastic emotional distance from conforming to what “everybody else” thought. As you may recall, lemmings will conform even unto rushing with their herd over a cliff to their death by drowning. (The lemming effect may be found on a computer’s Oxford ROM dictionary)
Back in my adolescent years, the “unthinking” part used to grate on me. Now I’m more charitable. My teenage peers, innocent of history, would justify their innocence by valuing being “up to the minute” and “the now generation.” They had no clue their beliefs, as rigid as mid-winter ice, had changed from a few years ago, and in a few years would change again, just as surely as ice melts in spring. The rebellious radio disc jockey would proclaim, “Rock and Roll is here to stay!” Now he plays rap.
At my elementary school (of two hundred students, one class per grade) I saw no nerds, not even me, and I don’t think any of us were into conforming—at least, not from fear. But when we hit the teen years—whoah! Then I was a nerd, being too stubborn to conform out of peer pressure. Come to think of it, I just didn’t believe in fear. I was the only clean cut kid on the academic program who would elbow his way through the “tough guys” washroom. When I emerged, the regular academic kids would ask in awe, “What were you doing in there?” It helped that I respected the tough guys in my classes by not ignoring them, not being afraid of them, and being as friendly as I could be. I think they were touched by that. At any rate, there was always someone to defend me when I was challenged for being in “their” washroom.
I later found, I must confess, my new improved grown up world to be only a little better. The same adults who would, in the past century, aim a flame thrower at me for not being Politically Correct, who would also praise the motion picture Mississippi Burning for being so PC, because of the whites, regardless of research, NOT trying to “speak for” or “represent” Blacks… Those same adults would now, in our new century, put flames to that film for not having “diversity,” for NOT having the white director and white script writer and white actors do research to “show Blacks.” (Featuring Francis McDormand, William Defoe and Gene Hackman)
In fairness, maybe not “the same adults,” at least, not in their own minds, because conformists don’t remember. And don’t read. Nope, not even college graduates, as we know because politicians can count on the public not remembering for any longer than the duration of an election cycle. Four years. So if society allows Russia to annex Crimea, causing a nerd, who of course knows his history, to say a pithy “Munich,” (the Munich Pact is in my computer’s Oxford dictionary) then he has the “satisfaction” of being right (Especially on February 24, 2022) combined with the “humiliation” of being a nerd because he knows the normal majority won’t get the reference. In high school it was more frustrating than humiliating. Never mind. One might think, “At least, thank God, folks are more informed as adults.” One might be wrong.
I know adults wouldn’t “get” Munich because in college one day I stood in front of the class to do a presentation on a volunteer organization. I chose the Royal Canadian Legion. I told a story about a man in a red plaid lumberjack shirt wanting to join. The guy in the blue legion blazer taking membership was frustrated: “…What? If you weren’t in the navy, the army or the RCAF, then what the heck were you in?” The triumphant reply: “I was in the Luftwaffe!” (German air force) From the front of the class, at the punchline, I watched as half the faces instantly contorted in mirth… while the other half stayed blank. Until that moment, I wouldn’t have known college students were that uninformed. I had thought that regular boys and girls, not just nerds, go through a phase of being interested in WWII and how our parents, who would have known the horror of war from WWI, got themselves into yet another war.
Hence I will only talk about something as important as world peace with smart folks like Phillip, in that bar on Main Street. Because otherwise for any “country in today’s news” by the time I’ve finished explaining history, and basic human nature, such as at Munich, I am too tired out to start discussing the current topic.
A few weeks ago I was in my Member of Parliament’s office, chatting with one of the sensible helpers. Call us delicate liberals, but we both looked stunned at the memory as we confessed to each other, “I never would have predicted that Canada would leave all those translators behind…” (to be killed) I was comforted that I was not the only nerd to fail to predict how regular Canadians would behave.
When I say nerds “don’t care” about the crowd I mean this partly because they are genuinely oblivious, like the absent minded professor who doesn’t know his colours clash, and partly because they are mentally independent. One of my favourite web essayists is computer millionaire Paul Graham. The oft-repeated theme of his essays is that nerds value substance over style. They don’t respect “pointy haired bosses” or those who put on a confident body language in their three piece suits. In a software company, even senior executives are likely to wear jeans and T-shirts. Steve Jobs wore a turtleneck. Graham notes that in affluent Silicon Valley there are nice restaurants, but none that insist men wear a suit jacket.
As for nerds being into individuality, instead of conforming, I recently read in the newspaper something you won’t find on the Six o’clock news: The Silicon Valley nerd millionaires are sending their kids to private schools—as you would expect down in the US where schools are so bad that children can graduate while still illiterate—but not to expensive “preppie” schools. (to “prepare” kids to get into college) No, to schools for individuality, such as Waldorf and Montessori. I can relate, for friends of mine sent their children to the local Waldorf for the kids to be creative, but not, of course, to become artsy delicate-types: In fact, one of my friend’s sons, despite his freedom-from a conformist regular school, was far from being too different or too alienated from regular society. He became a corporal in a tank battalion—killed in action in Afghanistan—and then all I could do was rage on my blog, because regular people didn’t have a goddam clue! As for the Canadians doing actual work of “nation building” by“winning hearts and minds…” our journalists avoided them to go cover the armed forces! (Don’t get me started)`
Grinding my teeth, I will stop here. More to say next week. (1183 words)
END OF PART ONE
Sean Crawford
Calgary
December 2023
Blog Note: My fortnightly nonfiction criticism group is convinced I should expand on what I showed them about nerds. Hence I have a part 2 coming. I should go beyond my usual word count, they said, because they are interested in knowing more. See you next week.
