The Soft Underpinnings of a Nerd.

The first indication that one might have that I am a complete and total nerd comes from simply walking into my house and looking at the kitchen counter. Right now, it’s in its natural state and I don’t wish to take a picture because there are empty crystal light packets sitting on it, so allow me to paint one with words.

Let’s begin with the end that you see when you walk into my house. Currently there is a purse with keys hanging off of it sitting there, next to it is the torx socket set that my husband bought me for Christmas and a Harvey Two Face pez dispenser. Beyond that, moving further from the door, we find a small can of air and a couple of bottles of water. This is followed by my winter hat, upon which sits my iPhone. Next to the iPhone are a pair of apple headphones, followed by my external hard drive, all of which are connected to my macbook. Slightly to the right of my macbook is the case for my Nintendo DS, but my DS isn’t actually in it. That’s a little further to the right and just to the left of my Sony cybershot. Then you will find my portable GPS, sitting where I left it after my adventures yesterday and then we come upon my brand new 350 GB portable hard drive and my 2nd gen iPod Nano. Oh… and there’s a bottle of tums, a bottle of antibacterial hand lotion and a nail buffer.

This is where I live most days of the week. This is my life scattered across a six feet of oak and formica.

Dear God, I am a nerd.

It occurred to me that I really am a big nerd when I was talking to a friend of mine. I am friends with both him and his wife and we’re still new at this friendship thing. We’ve just come out the other side of the getting to know you phase and I wish I could hang out with his wife a bit more often because she’s really the greatest. But, and I am baring my soul to her here, because I know she reads my blog when she has time, I have still been just a little bit afraid to let her see how big of a nerd I really am. So when I have nerdy things that I want to gush about, particularly of a mac nature, I IM her husband over google talk.

Why is it, you ask, that I can talk to her husband about my nerdiness and not her? It’s really simple actually. He’s a code monkey. If he’s not writing code, he’s telling people what code they should write or implement and since he’s a code monkey, I know that he gets it. Her, well… I’m a bit afraid to let her see how big of a geek I truly am. I know that she knows it. I know that she realizes that I am a bigger geek than I reveal to her in our conversations, but as a geek I have spent years being nervous about revealing it to others. And the truth is, I am not a hard core, all out geek. I love my gadgets, but I don’t code anymore. I haven’t for a long time. Hell, I haven’t even installed my own plug-ins on my blog, even though I know how to.

Even so, and in spite of the fact that I absolutely adore Prada and wish I could afford to blow a ridiculous amount of money on their shoes, I am afraid to really let her see my inner nerd. It’s not that I don’t like her, or that I don’t trust her. I know that she understands it, she married a code monkey after all, but still there is a part of me that views my inner geek as the soft underpinnings of my soul and it’s sort of scary for me to let that nerd out of the box in front of someone that I’m still getting to know.

When I realized that, I asked myself why. Why can’t I just be who I am in front of her? I know that she knows it already. I know that she was well aware of my geekiness and passed no judgment against me for it. I know that she does not think less of me, but then I understood what it was. I have spent my entire life being a geek. I have the pictures to prove that I got my first computer at the tender age of 13, when life sucks for every single being on the planet and it was one of the happiest days of my life. I was such a big nerd that I refuse to post the pictures here, even though my mother scanned them and emailed them to me just a couple of weeks ago.

It was then, at that tender age, that I got my first dose of what it meant to be a nerd. I was a social outcast, but then who wasn’t in junior high? But it was then that I learned to not talk about the fact that I got a commodore 64 for Christmas and that it was the coolest present ever. I was one of four kids in my junior high that actually had a computer at home and I was horribly bullied over that and other things about me that made me decidedly different from the rest of the sheep in the herd. I learned to hide my inner geek because it was constantly made fun of and teased, but now I am out of the closet and I am learning that my love of macs may not be socially acceptable and I simply do not care. The fact that my husband bought me car parts and tools for Christmas is not something I am ashamed of. Anyone who reads my blog knows that these were logical choices for Christmas presents for me and that I screamed and squealed when I opened the tools and kissed my husband when I saw Viola’s brand new JCW grill.

I am… such a nerd and yet, when I think about it, it occurs to me that everyone is a nerd. Yes, you heard that right. Everyone is a nerd.

The guy that sits in front of the TV watching his favorite team play while wearing their logo on every part of his body, bumper stickering it on the back of his pick up, and even has a mouse pad that splatters team spirit on it at work, he’s a nerd. The gal that goes shopping and binges to spend a bazillion dollars on shoes and handbags and has to have a walk in closet just for her accessories, she’s a nerd too.

When I think about it like that, I really have no reason to live in fear of the world. It’s silly of me really, to want to hide. So here it is world…

I am a NERD!

Damn… that feels good!