Getting My Nerd On

Homer: (Yelling at a student) Neeeeerd!
Marge: Homer, that isn't very nice.
Homer: Marge, try to understand. There are two kinds of college students: jocks and nerds. As a jock, it is my duty to give nerds a hard time.
(A "jock" walks by)
Hey pal! Did you get a load of the nerd?
Jock: Pardon me?

I think at some point everyone has a moment in their life when they realize what kind of person they are. I'm sure a guy with five pairs of skinny jeans who wears a keffiyeh at some point realizes he's a hipster. Meat-heads undoubtedly know who they are after they've pummeled their first helpless victim. A nerd, however, must grudgingly accept his or her nerdom overtime, long after years of trying to distance themselves from the label and all it entails.

I had such a moment a few weeks ago when a co-worker and I were discussing the latest Battlestar Galactica episode. This was one in I don't know how many conversations we've had on the subject. Somehow the conversation veered toward a mutual acquaintance. My colleague pointed out that this acquaintance had somewhat of an elitist attitude about his own nerdom. "It's like he's trying to make me feel bad for being a geek even though he was probably bullied in school and didn't have a girlfriend until college." Right there it hit me. All this time I'd sort of avoided giving myself the "nerd" or "geek" label in order to avoid being associated with "those" nerds, the really awkward, Milhouse-types that got picked on a lot, have poor social skills, and very little going for them in the way of a social life. What a shallow, self-centered attitude to have about one's family. After all, these same "geeks" are the ones I share my rants with over the latest Daredevil trade and complain to about the latest issue of Final Crisis. How dare I not want to associate with these people? These are my people.

And so with this new found appreciation of my fellow geeks, I took on the nerd label with pride. I wasn't going to let anyone shame me otherwise. After all, there's no point in trying to deny who you are. I obsess over things like comic books, movies and TV. I'm shy around girls I like and like talking about girls I can't have. I'm as nerdy as one can get.

All this brings me to the recent Toronto Comicon I attended. It was here that I discovered something else about being a nerd: it's kind of sad. While I enjoyed perusing through the stacks of comics with the rest of the herd, I realized later on there were probably better things I could have been doing with my time. I could be looking for teaching jobs overseas; I could be reading a novel (the non-graphic kind); I could be outside chilling on a patio with less nerdier folk discussing the finer things in life and hitting on hot waitresses. And yet none of this entered my mind as I flipped through one trade after the other searching desperately for Garth Ennis' sixth volume in his run on The Punisher. All that I could think about was how stupid I was for picking up the other books in that series in trade paperback when I could've bought the freakin' omnibus with all thirty-seven issues! But that's a whole other blog post. (I never did find that book, but I did manage to get my hands on Ed Brubaker's Fantastic Four: Books of Doom and a very rare copy of Batman: A Lonely Place Of Dying - featuring the first appearance of Tim Drake as Robin, which sells for $60 on Amazon. So the day wasn't a total loss.)

After the con, me and some fellow nerds went to East Side Mario's, where I learned a valuable lesson - nerds may be great at conversing about comics, but they have no tact. As we were waiting to be served, one dude decided to take out one of his Indiana Jones action figures and assemble it on the table, prompting our attractive waitress to joke, "Oh isn't that cute. I had some five-year-olds in this morning who were doing the same thing!" Everyone kind of laughed; I was mortified. "Dude, you've put a hex on the rest of us!" I said. There's a time and place for everything, and a restaurant with cute waitresses is no place for someone to be playing with toys.

After we left the restaurant, I had a feeling of indigestion that wasn't the result of my Alfredo penne and shrimp. After seeing such an obvious faux-pas, I just couldn't rationalize how I fit into this nerd universe. All this time I was certain this universe was small, but maybe it's bigger than I realized, large enough to fit in both the really nerdy, the somewhat nerdy and those with nerd-tendencies (eg. hot girls that read comic books have nerd-tendencies). I guess if I had to put myself into one of those categories, I'd say I'm somewhat nerdy. Despite my predilection for geek fare, I at least have tact. I may not be a Zack Morris or A.C. Slater with women, but I'm no Screech Powers either.

I guess we all go through this identity quest at one point in our lives. No one's life is static forever. Today I'm into comic books. Tomorrow I may be in to Salsa dancing. I hear you can pick up chicks that way.

(And I might as well throw this out there, if anyone happens to know where I can find a copy of The Punisher: A Confederacy of Dunces by Garth Ennis, please let me know)