It is time for a confession. I have to admit it. Here, publicly, for everyone to see. I am (gasp) a nerd. It’s true. I know. If you could not tell from the story of how I met my husband (see my blog dated February 18, 2013). But I am. I am the kind of nerd that celebrates March 14, May 4, and September 20. I am the kind of nerd that pastes photos of Admiral Ackbar onto mousetraps. I am the kind of nerd that has a sticker on my keyboard’s space bar that says, “The Final Frontier.” I am the kind of nerd that knows who the “Egyptian God of Frustration” is, as well as who “Vera” is. I am the kind of nerd that knows words/phrases in Elvish, Chinese, and Klingon, as well as what “as you wish,” is code for.
I have been meaning for some time now to do a blog about being a geek/nerd. Whatever you call it. There are people who make distinction between the two terms, but I, for one, use them interchangeably. For the purposes of this writing, and to make things simpler, I will say "nerd" to describe myself, because I'm not unusually knowledgeable about science or computers (which is the meaning some people ascribe to the word "geek.") But I AM unusually knowledgeable about Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings.
This one is for my peeps out there- you know who you are. The ones who eat pie on National Pi Day, March 14. The ones who watch all three (or six, if you happen to be of that persuasion) Star Wars movies on May 4, National Star Wars Day, and go around telling people, “May the Fourth be with you!” The ones who watch every single episode of Firefly, then watch Serenity, and then curse Fox and cry for more, on September 20. The ones who get the jokes about Admiral Ackbar and The Final Frontier. The ones who even know who Admiral Ackbar is. The ones who know that Zack once referred to Garibaldi’s Daffy Duck poster as “The Egyptian God of Frustration.” The ones who know who “Vera” is on the show Firefly. The ones who have themselves picked up Elvish from The Lord of the Rings, Chinese from Firefly/Serenity, and Klingon from Star Trek. And you guys also know that “as you wish” really means “I love you.”
Anyway, I am a nerd. Which I am totally fine with that. I LIKE being a nerd, and I'm proud of it. At the risk of sounding narcissistic and completely full of myself, I venture to say that I LIKE myself. I like how I am, and I like liking the things that I like. I don't mean that I don't think I have room to improve, God knows I do, but what I mean is, I have a reasonable healthy self-esteem. And as part of that, I am a nerd, and I like being one.
I wasn’t always a nerd. As a child, I did always love reading. I always loved superheroes and fairy tales and fantasy-type stories. But I had no idea that those things were considered nerdy. I hated, and I mean HATED, Star Wars when it first came out. Yes, I am old enough to remember that. I turned 8 that year. And several of my friends were into it, but I did not go see it, and I just did not see the attraction. I saw the original Kenner toys advertised on TV, but I wasn’t interested. Imagine if I had purchased some of those, how much they would be worth now!
It wasn’t until I was around 13, when I actually watched any part of a Star Wars movie. I was on my eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., and while we were in the hotel room, The Empire Strikes Back was on TV. I complained the whole time, and begged my roommates to turn the channel. I didn’t see what was so great about a guy in the snow getting attacked by a yeti and defeating it with a light saber. And all the rest. It just didn’t do anything for me. It’s funny to remember that now, because now ESB is my favorite of the movies, and I can quote whole sections. But at the time, I just didn’t get it.
Then when I was 14, I went out with some girlfriends to the movies and they chose The Return of the Jedi. I endured it; it didn’t make any sense to me. The speeder bike chase made me dizzy (still does, I must say). Nothing about it appealed to me, except I did think Harrison Ford was good-looking. Well. He was.
It was also during my fourteenth year that I started dating. I must say that in my high school, there were various cliques, and for a time I was an outcast, until the “brains” accepted me into their clan. I didn’t really deserve to be in that group; I wasn’t smart enough. My grades weren’t good enough. I knew nothing about computers. But they accepted me. To this day I’m unsure why, but thankful. Before long, I started dating one of the guys in the group, whom I will call John, because, well, that was his name. John took me to see a movie called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It sounded like it would be horrible! I couldn’t see why anyone would want to see a movie with that title! However, as we sat through the opening credits, the name Harrison Ford flashed on the screen. I turned to John, “You didn’t tell me Harrison Ford was in this. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have complained.” Well, I watched it and loved it. Years later, I went on to watch the rest of the Indiana Jones series (even, much later, “Indiana Geriatric and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”), and came to love Temple of Doom the least of them. But at the time, Temple of Doom was all I knew, and I loved it. Before high school was over, I was dressing up as Indiana Jones for Spirit Week.
It wasn’t until after I was married, however, that I saw all the Star Wars movies for the first time. Sam (my ex-husband) and I went through a phase where we watched several movies that came in series. We watched the Back to the Futures (which I loved but had no idea they were sci-fi), the Supermans (also loved but didn’t know they were considered to be sci-fi), and some others that actually weren’t sci-fi, but I don’t really remember all of what we watched. What I do remember is that somewhere during that time I sat down (no doubt under some kind of duress) and watched all three of the Star Wars movies IN ORDER. And at that time, I was like, “I GET it now.” I saw why everybody was so crazy about these movies. I even saw what people saw in sci-fi in general. Once I saw all three movies in order, I understood the plot. I felt, for the first time, the charm of the story, of the characters, and even the charm and mesmerizing quality of the overwhelming odds that the characters faced … and conquered. I finally saw that the Star Wars movies were like a fairy tale, but set in outer space. I immediately became a fan, not only of Star Wars, but of sci fi in general. It was not long after, that I began to write my own sci-fi novel. I started writing it in the early 90’s, and I still haven’t finished it (although I have worked on it quite a bit off and on). I have done a few other things, like give birth to, raise, and home school a child, hold down several jobs over the years, participate in my church, do volunteer work, take classes, etc. Not an excuse for not finishing my book, but a reason. I set my priorities and lived by them.
Anyway, I became a sci-fi fan. And I didn’t realize it, but I had always been a fantasy fan. As a child I had seen a cartoon on TV that was telling the Christian story using a lion as the Christ character. Even as a kid, I looked at that, and said, “That’s Jesus!” But I did not get to see the whole show for some reason and so never found out what it was called. I was visiting my father (I was a child of divorce, what can you do?) one summer when I was around 12, and my step-siblings were busy one day, so I decided to read. I found about five books on horses in my step-sister’s bookshelf, and the first one I read was by a man I’d never heard of, and was called A Horse and His Boy. I devoured it eagerly, and when it was over, I returned to my step-sister’s shelf for more of the same. I painstakingly read every one of the others, but they were all just stories about a girl who wanted a horse, and then there was some trouble, and then she got one. Boring. Especially on the heels of A Horse and His Boy. I then asked my step-sister if she had anything else like that one, but she just made noises like she didn’t “get” that book, and she much preferred the other ones on her shelf. Years later, I would hear a youth pastor would tell a story about a boy who was turned into a dragon, taken from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by someone called C.S. Lewis, and I would run out to try to find a book by that author, but I would only come up with a volume of excerpts from his theological works. More years would pass, and a college boyfriend would insist that I read The Chronicles of Narnia, and I would start The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but be fairly bored with it, and put it down just pages before it finally got good. Even more years would pass, and then Sam, my ex-husband would tell me that I really needed to give The Chronicles of Narnia another chance. And so at last, I did give Narnia a chance, and I read for the first time past the boring part, and found that I couldn’t put it down. In reading The Chronicles, I found that I recognized the story of the boy turning into a dragon, and the horse story, and lo and behold, I had finally rediscovered that delightful lion story I had seen on TV as a child! Apparently, I had been a fantasy-loving nerd all along and hadn’t even realized it!
Nerds Vs. Non- Nerds
This is the thing about nerds that I think most non-nerds must not get. Non-nerds see only reality. They are concerned with things like inflation, jury duty, gas prices, new drapes, oil changes, sports stats, botox injections, and keeping up with the Joneses. (No one seems to realize that the Joneses, in turn, are trying just as hard to keep up with THEM, but that, as they say, is another blog). Non-nerds see only reality. Nerds, however, are different. Nerds see reality as it is, but they also see what COULD be. Nerds appreciate people who use their imagination enough to see beyond reality to what could be.
Non-nerds see only what they can physically SEE. Nerds are constantly fantasizing, imagining, thinking, brainstorming, and problem-solving. Nerds think that non-nerds must be constantly bored. Nerds are always fascinated- with stories, books, movies, drawings, costumes, and even with reality. Everything around them excites and engages them. Everything MOVES them. If a nerd sees something he likes, he likes it so enthusiastically that he will read it, watch it, collect it, and dress up like it.
Nerds use their imagination, and they seek out others who do, too. Non-nerds tend to identify themselves with their job. They think of themselves as plumbers, stockbrokers, dentists, or waitresses. But a nerd identifies themselves with their fictional heroes- they think of themselves as Spiderman or Gimli or Black Widow or Yoda. Nerds may appear on the outside to be mild-mannered Clark Kents, wearing glasses or even overweight, going around with their noses stuck in a Kindle or an iPad or a computer. But in their reality, they are good-looking, wearing armor, riding on a fearless battle steed to fight a raging dragon to rescue a princess, earn wealth, and save the kingdom. I don't understand why everybody wouldn’t prefer to be a nerd.
In the television show House, M.D., there was a character named Dr. Kutner who was a nerd. He had met a person who had formerly been into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then had joined a religious group, and then completely and drastically changed her way of life. He was trying to explain to another character how he understood that something like that could happen. And this is how his part of the conversation went:
“You can become a D’har Master. Does that require further explanation? … In college, I was really into science fiction. Not like the guys with the $600 prosthetic ears who could swear in Romulan. That was embarrassing to the rest of us who just thought it was good, smart literature. I went to ONE convention. By senior year, I was D’har Master of the Klingon Empire. … You can’t have your eyes opened to something and not act on it.”Non-nerds might look at us and think we are out of touch with world events because the last time they saw us, we were dressed up as a Mal Reynolds or Kaylee Frye. But nerds look at world events, and say, "Whoa! It's scary! If we don't DO something about it, we could end up with a government like the Alliance!" What most non-nerds don't realize is that sci-fi and fantasy novels/movies/shows address the same issues we face every day; they just address them in a way that's larger than life. And they make us THINK. We might be outwardly dressed as a Jedi, but on the inside, we have the most serious minds. (There was a joke there for the nerds, but it will sail right on over the heads of most non-nerds.) I once saw a guy with a tee shirt that said he was a superhero disguised as a nerd. And that is really how it is. We look like we are totally in left field, out there with our light sabers and our hobbit feet. But the fact is, we are attracted to sci fi and fantasy because it not only takes a hard look at the world’s problems, but also, it tries to do something about them. Nerds want to be Mal Reynolds because he is a thorn in the tyrannical Alliance’s side. They want to be Batman because he fights crime. They want to be Eowyn and kill the evil Witch King of Angmar. They want to be Superman and save the world. And because these are their goals in their imagination, and because this is the kind of thing that their minds are dwelling on, they’ll be more active citizens. They’ll vote, and they’ll get involved, and they’ll protest, and some of them might even run for office. And maybe non-nerds won’t realize that their motivation came from the last Orson Scott Card book they read. But it did.
Nerds might be sitting around speaking to each other in Elvish while a life-size Boba Fett stands in the back of the room, and non-nerds might be sitting around on their leather couches worrying about their second mortgage while drinking their non-fat latte. Non-nerds might see nerds and think we're weird. But nerds look at non-nerds and think they're BORED.
