Provocative question from a marketing e-mail: "Do you consider yourself a nerd?"
Oh, if only the bullies had put it like that, I might have said, "Sure."
Next question: "Do you want to know where you can go to be surrounded by others who share the same interests and obsessions with certain movies, books, or games?"
I assume it's hell.
The e-mail was a marketing come-on from lombardohomes.com, announcing a national ranking of nerdy states. Minnesota is the 17th nerdiest. We'll get to the methodology in a moment, but for now we must ask: Is being labeled a nerd good or bad?
In my youth, it was a term of derision. A nerd was someone who had no social panache, no sense of the cool. An overly moist lad with a retainer. He wore polyester shirts from Sears in bad plaid patterns. One of my nerd friends had a pocket protector, in case his big Bic four-color pen leaked. He also had a slide rule, in case anyone needed to calculate the amount of fuel needed to get to the moon. It rarely came up.
He was also a Boy Scout and could build a fire using a protractor and a Coke bottle — or, failing that, by concentrating the beams of the sun through his nerd-strength glasses, which he'd had since he was two days old. We were friends because we liked comic books and science fiction — the sort of stuff that defined the pitiful nerd in those days. Walking with a red-shamed face past the homecoming football game while dreaming of rockets and superheroes.
But how does the survey define a nerd? Turns out it includes someone who has furnishings in their house based on a licensed character. "Furnishings?" You say. A Thor-themed armoire? A Star Wars ottoman? And why isn't there a superhero named Otto Man? By day, mild-mannered Turkish furniture store clerk! By night, crime's deadliest foe! Evil can't put its feet up and be comfy as long as OTTO MAN stalks the streets!
