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I chose
nerdiness as much as it chose me. As small children, we really
can't make choices about how smart we are, or how much our
families value intelligence (or watch Star Trek), but
certainly by the time we're in junior high many of us realize
that we don't need to play Dungeons & Dragons, spend gorgeous
summer days hunkered down in the musty library, or obsessively
quote The Prisoner or Monty Python.
I realized
that too, but I had already spent my entire life being an
outsider—first as the whitest girl in the West Brighton
Projects (which, let me tell you, was great) and then as the
nappiest-headed girl in P.S. 41 on Staten Island (not so great).
I liked my friends, I liked my hobbies, I liked getting A's,
and I liked not spending hours blow-drying my hair straight,
so I stayed as I was, even though it meant getting wadded-up
paper thrown at my naturally nappy head.
Because
I am a nerd, I found Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd: The
Story of My People to be both glorious and frustrating.
It's a natural nerd tendency to find fault with things. That's
one of the ways we assert our superiority and the way we participate
in the artistic process. Finding continuity errors in Star
Wars movies can be viewed as valid a form of criticism
as deconstruction or feminist theory. The last two require
levels of emotional interpretations, the first follows a specific
set of rules. According to Nugent, areas that involve specific
rules—programming, polyamory, role-playing—are where
nerds excel. Unfortunately, this assertion is deeply buried
in the book and not as fully explored as I would have liked.
 For
my friends and I, it was the complex social rules that often
confused us, not excited us. Intellectually we understood
that we were supposed to pretend not to be as smart as the
guys we liked, and certainly not debate them when they said
foolish things such as "The Sex Pistols invented punk rock."
By sixth grade, we found that there were in fact rules that
were to be followed. We were intellectually smart enough to
identify the rules, like acting dumber than the boys, praising
them, and spending time trying to find clothes that made us
look slimmer or push-up bras that made us look bustier. But
we were not emotionally developed enough to utilize them.
Or perhaps the rules just didn't matter to us, since they
seemed so illogical—why would we act dumb, and wear make-up
and nice clothes to attract boys? They didn't have to do that.
I remember
a friend I had in seventh grade, Janice, who was a smart girl
from a new school. She excelled in science and math, and she
was quick with Monty Python quotes. Her hair was brown and
middle-parted, she wore Lee jeans, and no make-up. She was
one of us. When we got back to school after the summer break,
Janice had changed. Her hair was styled and highlighted; she
wore three shades of shimmery brown shadow that emphasized
her large almond-shaped eyes. She wore blush, lip gloss, and
fashionable clothes. Walking into the schoolyard that day,
Janice was immediately swallowed up by the cool girls. She
was invited to parties where cute boys waited to make out
with her. Her grades dropped, but she seemed happier. "You
could be one of us," she told me in math class one day. She
took my frizzy hair in her hands. "We need to straighten this
out with hot rollers. And you need to start paying more attention
to your skin. The rest will be easy." It didn't sound easy
to me. I didn't take her up on her offer of a makeover.
Nugent
spends about half the book exploring various nerd cultures
like gaming and the Society for Creative Anachronism, and
the other half telling stories from his childhood. His non-personal
chapters never go in depth enough to explain the appeal of
these activities, and I found Nugent's choices to be a little
narrow. There are very few differences among people who go
to Renaissance Faires, those play Dungeons & Dragons, and
those who attend anime conventions in costume (known as cosplay).
They are all engaging in rule-driven fantasy. What about music
geeks, comic book men, literature and grammar nerds? These
subcultures don't make it into American Nerd, which
saddened me, because those are my people. I actually have
friends who will argue about serial commas, and about which
Ministry side-project is better, Lard or 1000 Homo DJs. These
aren't people who are simply attracted to rules, they are
people who are passionate about their chosen subject enough
to become ridiculously expert. We are still nerds, even if
we don't have a closet full of medieval costumes and Sailor
Moon uniforms.
[continued
on page 2]
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