Nerd's wife. I win!
Posted on 06/02/2008 1:55:29 PM PDT by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
When we were in junior high school, my friend Rich and I made a map of the school lunch tables according to popularity. This was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch with others of about the same popularity. We graded them from A to E. A tables were full of football players and cheerleaders and so on. E tables contained the kids with mild cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the language of the time we called "retards."
We sat at a D table, as low as you could get without looking physically different. We were not being especially candid to grade ourselves as D. It would have taken a deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in the school knew exactly how popular everyone else was, including us.
(Excerpt) Read more at paulgraham.com ...
I’ve always had crushes on nerds.
I'd have to say Gates only got that half right.
Who'll spend their money, if not on jewels and cruises, then on African dictators.
A good example is Howard Hughes.
For one thing, I was one of the smallest kids in my class as a freshman but grew to be one of the biggest by my senior year.
Also, many of the jocks in my classes found me to be a bit of a screwball -- and maybe someone to be grudgingly respected -- when I regularly volunteered to play goaltender for hockey games in gym class . . . without any pads.
I don't think anyone who plays rugby could be called a nerd.
Ouch. Your parents rejected an opportunity for you to make as much as $250.00 per hour, plus travel expenses, at least until you aged out. Even then, the demand would still be there, but the hourly rate drops off.
Insightful bump
Yes, it’s quite perceptive.
I think the biggest mistake nerds make is not going out for sports. It is one of the few kid-approved activities which are purposeful and recognize ability and hard work. The nerdy kids may never become the most-popular jocks, but they can get healthy exercise and a measure of respect from going out.
185 lbs. Rugby player, cliff climber, spelunker and I like to design and build my own telescopes.
I am a nerd.
Same story for me, but with a difference. When the jocks wanted my expertise, I would write their homework essays for them, and I charged for it. They were afraid I would make it look too professional, so I added a few misspellings to make it look like their work. For $20 I would do a single paper, but the really good work would cost them up to $50. (You don't respect something you get cheaply or, even worse, for free.) This was good money back in 1964. The beatings stopped, I got respect, and I never got caught. Nor did my "clients".
I took care of one individual, a real asshole, who sat behind me for two years. He had tormented me by punching me in the back just to hear the sound it made. The teachers smiled and let him get away with it. He spent his time outside of class drinking and whoring with his Mafia wannabee buddies.
Not bothering to study, he needed help on exams. If he didn't know the answer, he would tap me on the shoulder. For example, if he wanted the answer to #34, he would tap me 3 times on the left shoulder and 4 times on the right. I would reach behind me and tap him on the knee once for "A", twice for "B", etc. This should have kept him off my case, but it didn't.
By the end of my sophomore year, he was asking for answers to practically every question. Once I gave him a deliberately wrong answer, and he punched me on the back. So I gave him another incorrect answer, but one that might be right. He took the bait. In those final exams I fed him wrong answer after wrong answer. Bottom line -- he flunked out.
Do not f*** with nerds! We get our revenge eventually.
Some famous guy said once that getting the first million is difficult, but the second million is inevitable.
My daughter is the uber-nerd - valedicatorian of her class - but is also a band geek, a jock, a musician, a theater kid, and a volunteer. She has found it very easy to slip in and out of groups. And yes, she did all the extra things because she didn’t want to be defined by her ‘nerd-ish-ness’ but by her whole self.
Bailey’s used to make the best ice cream soda in the world; I used to spend a lot of time there in the sixties just for those ice cream sodas - wonder if we crossed paths? I miss that place.
Well, someone had to say it. I would guess the percentage is even higher than "significant majority".
As for myself: guilty.
My experience: Being nearly 6ft but skinny, wearing glasses, and always the last chosen for gym class teams (we didn't have track for kids like me to excel in). Being smart and having a high IQ was offset by being borderline autistic (they call it Asperger's nowadays) left kids like me on the outside of sports, dates, dances, etc. High school was hell. One of my friends, smartest kid in his class, suicided in his senior year.
Nerd's wife. I win!
I am not a nerd - I’m a mental hunk...
One answer besides homeschooling, if for some reason you can't manage that, is to send a child to a smaller private or parochial school.
After investigating our local public schools, I sent my kids to religious schools. The great thing about the smaller schools is that the adults really set out to affect the culture and do succeed. There's still some of the cliqueishness and a minor degree of bullying that goes on, but it's softened by a serious effort to make nerdishness 'cool' and to make sure that every kid has a group that he's comfortable in. And with more adults and fewer kids, it works.
I've got one kid who's definitely a nerd (academics, music, and theater) and one kid who is not academic enough to be a nerd but would probably be picked on in public school. He's found his niche in sports, but is not good enough to be one of the star jocks. But that's o.k., because in the small school he has a circle of friends and a teacher-coach who keeps an eye on him.
ping... you nerd
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