Nerds

Nerds are those legendary losers who can’t get a date, can’t get it right, and can’t even get into trouble! You gotta love it. The late mister Blackwell, that well known Brit of fashion fame, never deliberately added any well known nerd to his annual list of worst dressed people in the world. He could have, but didn’t, perhaps because they were such easy targets. You remember…

The kid who wore big flower print shirts, maybe suspenders—before Larry King made them acceptable—and pulled his pants halfway up his chest while his more macho compadres wore theirs so low that they threatened to become a police matter.

Nerds can’t talk socially to anyone about anything that is not directly related to something serious—like astrophysics. I actually know a young man who does that very thing. He’s tall, handsome, IQ of 160, and no it’s not me—well at least the tall part. But, seriously, the German army at Stalingrad had less trouble than this young man has had in trying to find a girlfriend to—uh—network with socially. He has however lately found such a one; and, she actually is studying, I am not kidding, astrophysics, and that at UC Berkeley. I guess it takes one to know one.

To give you some idea how difficult it is for such as this young man to relate, feature this. Another friend recently sent me an item that I thought was as funny as could be. To wit…

“Can’t find the perfect gift for your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? How about the gift of a pre-arranged funeral.”

Now, I don’t know about you folks, but a pre-arranged life-departure ceremony doesn’t strike me as a particularly romantic idea—any implicit practicality notwithstanding. My young friend, however, actually argued with me about it; he thought it was a stroke of genius! Different, sensible, thoughtful, and needed by most folks, i.e., those who one day would actually have to die, he maintained. I was speechless. You can’t argue with a nerd. Their arguments are invariably scientifically defensible. Those, the arguments, of us commoners are usually less so.

Einstein was a nerd, and it is a fact that he very often did not tie his shoes. When his famous contemporary, Niels Bohr, asked him about it, so the legend goes, Einstein was said to have remarked that he didn’t have the time, i.e., to tie his shoes. That it was apparent he couldn’t find the time to comb his hair is also telling.

Bill Gates is known to have been a nerd, and it was only by the sheerest of luck that he managed to find a woman who was simpatico with his interests—actually an employee of his company—that he was saved from social isolation. He has of course achieved notable success in the world of both computer science and finance. The word is that he is the richest man who ever lived.

Getting the picture. Nerds may not be the best dancers in the world, and their conversation, though undoubtedly meaningful, may not be as interesting as say Blackwell’s list of the worst dressed celebrities in the world, but they do have a place in society that somebody has to fill. Oh, what’s that, you ask? Well…

By definition a nerd is, “He or she for whom the rest of us will one day work!” You gotta love it. So, the next time you see someone sitting alone at a cocktail party, wearing a shirt with big flowered prints, and holding a glass of cranberry juice, don’t neglect ‘em. Get ‘em something stronger and network the heck out of them.