Bringing nerdy back

If you haven't seen Aliens in America on the CW, I recommend checking it out. Filled with hysterical and awkward teen moments along with witty social commentary, it's like The Office set in high school. Starring Justin Tolchuk aka posterchild for uncool and his foreign exchange student friend Raja from Pakistan. Justin's mom is relentless in her quest to make him one of the cool kids and dresses him in skinny jeans and a tshirt that says "Computers Rock!" Justin however, tells her that the kids at school will only believe that he thinks computers really do rock. In other words, he really couldn't pull it off.

Nerdy really is subjective, and it depends so much on the individual. We've heard Hollywood stars proclaim how nerdy they were in high school only to find out that they were voted "Best Smile."

Recently a group of us decided that everybody is at least nerdy, dorky, geeky, or some combination of the three. Nerdy and dorky aren't so bad... it's geeky you want to stay away from.

Bryan disagrees with me. About two years ago I made it my personal mission to get Bryan to embrace his inner nerd. I'm still at it. I told Bryan that I thought he was 70% nerd and he protested most violently. I figured the PHD in Chemical Engineering qualified him for at least 50% nerd. We had seen some high school robotics competition on the news and the contestants being interviewed were wearing capes, qualifying them as 100% something. Bryan couldn't believe that he was only 30% from wearing a cape! I think the 3 categories can help clarify the situation. The cape wearing folks are 70% geeky and 30% nerdy. Bryan is 70% nerdy, 20% dorky, and perhaps 10% geeky. Problem solved.

Personally I think I'm 55% nerdy, 40% dorky, 5% geeky. I'm a big nerd about a lot of things. I'm a self-proclaimed word nerd and there's a closeted computer nerd lurking around too. And of course, I'm a dork like all people can be dorks. I can be awkward and act in ways that cause others to look at me funny. I jump around when others are quiet. I am incredibly clumsy.

I'll cop to the 5% geek but I don't deny that perhaps there's more geek than I would dare profess.