Nerd is a Four Letter Word

Radioactive spider bites don’t transform people into nerds. Neither does any of the other comic book tropes. It would be cool if that’s how it happened. Seriously, We’d all have better origin stories! Alas, most of us get to tell the same old story. A classmate walked into school one day and hurled the word at us. POOF! A nerd is born.

OK. One person calling you a nerd doesn’t make you a nerd. The constant repetition of that sentiment does. Something said/done/liked spurred the word pitched over and over. Somewhere during that process, the word and all of its synonyms became a part of who I was. This is where I would love to be able to tell you all about how my younger self owned the hell out of being a nerd. But, to quote Ayra Stark, “That’s not me.”

I wanted no part of being a nerd. Normal. That’s what I wanted. Not that I knew what normal was precisely, but I wanted it. There was nothing I wouldn’t censor about myself; this also includes asking my mother to sew me a book cover for the paperbacks I was reading. I don’t know how many internal monologues either started or ended with “Jesus, you are such a nerd! What is wrong with you?” This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In fairness to our past selves, we are a species wired to want to belong. It’s one of the traits that facilitated our rise to the top of the food chain. Who were we to disagree with thousands of years of evolution? A problematic argument to win when you are a kid.

But, then I turned eighteen, had an epiphany, and decided I was no longer going to redact myself for the outside world. Ha! Not quite. People stop calling you a nerd after a certain age. Being a twenty-something still engaged in schoolyard name calling is frowned upon. But, let’s be honest, the naming calling game just morphs into passive aggressive jabs and sucker punches. One of my favorites was a comment made by a boyfriend. He said I was intimidating his friends and even his sister with my intelligence and interests. At the time, my insides clenched up as if a Trapper Keeper ring snapped shut on them. My face most certainly turned Radio Flyer red. A wave of embarrassment crashed over me, and the urge to throw myself into a paper bag welled up.

Putting my Captain Hindsight goggles, which I have done a lot over the years, there is one question that comes to mind from this experience. Since when is a girl who stands five foot five intimidating? The technical answer is that I shouldn’t have been. These friends he was talking about were all funny and attractive men with flourishing social circles. His sister was a beautiful, sweet girl who was the life of the party. I could not compete with them on any level whatsoever. And yet, I sparked a feeling of inadequacy in each and every one of them. This makes the moral of this story: No, it’s not me, it’s you. That little nugget took a long while to sink in. It wasn’t just in that one moment either. I found it in a lot of the experiences that kept reinforcing the “What is wrong with you, Nerd?” internal admonitions. Talk about digging in the wrong place. If this were Raiders, I would have been digging in Mexico rather than outside of Cairo. (Oh, those pyramids. Whoops.)

This wasn’t all a mental misunderstanding on my part. The picture of a nerd in the hive mind that is society has changed. Lewis and Gilbert from Revenge of the Nerds aren’t the standards anymore. This shift is a result of how many people either identify as a nerd outright or who embrace the interest in nerd dominion. Nerds are not a minority like your school days would have you believe. The performance of Endgame at the box office says it all. Nerdism has filtered into the mainstream in a big way.

Does that mean I am cured? POOF! I no longer feel pangs of impending ridicule when I carry around a book. My interests and thoughts are open and free for me to talk about. That nagging voice in my head doesn’t bother to pipe up and point out when I am a nerd. Yeah, not quite. There is a lot of road left to travel on that front for me. I’m better now about it than I ever have been, but that doesn’t mean I become that person who wholly owns being a nerd girl. I haven’t quite let go of that shy girl who cried countless hours wishing to be “normal.” I don’t think I am alone on that. Well, maybe, I am. This would be something I would be glad to be wrong about. There is a comment section below so you can weigh in.