Once a nerd, always a nerd
Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund
Neither of my parents were full-time teachers, but they were always giving lessons. I wasn’t allowed to drive the car alone until my dad watched me change a tire in our driveway. My mother told me more about rose varieties in the Seventeenth Century than I ever wanted to know at 14.
They taught me a lot, but between them they had seven children. Sometimes, I learned life lessons from TV shows, music, and sports that my older siblings liked.
I watched shows like “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “Saved by the Bell” before they were reruns. Will Smith and Zack Morris were cool boys who didn’t care about school. Their respective foils, Carlton Banks and Screech, played it safe and did their homework.
It’s no secret where I fit in growing up.
My parents never called me a nerd, but at least four or five of our annual Christmas letters reported to our relatives that I was “an avid reader” and “loved school.” I cringe remembering playing school and trying to teach my poor little brother his multiplication facts when he was in kindergarten and all those times I told my classmates to be quiet when the teacher left the room.
Carlton’s humiliating dance moves and Screech’s terrible luck in romance built the foundation for my understanding nerds like me. We are high-strung, clumsy, and awkwardly lonely people.
If that weren’t a troubling enough message about oddballs already, add to it the idea that somewhere, deep inside our blundering existence lies a sexier and more carefree version of ourselves just waiting to be released, be it by the effects of drugs or alcohol, a makeover, a science experiment, or true love.
By 10, I learned that I needed to become someone else. This isn’t a new plotline. The 1963 Jerry Lewis classic “The Nutty Professor” nailed it: If you’re a geek, change.
A generation later, I was watching teen rom-coms “Never Been Kissed” and “She’s All That” that follow a similar formula. Of course all of these stories ended with the protagonists’ clumsy and brainy attributes preferred to their transformed selves — but not before the audience has seen them wearing more fashionable clothing and running with the trendy circles.
The standard narrative for leading nerds, particularly female nerds, presents us with the option of choosing conformity or exclusion. At the very least, we need better-fitting clothes and a good haircut for people to realize that they were okay with our foibles to begin with. For fellow female nerds, unfortunately, this often means that potential romantic partners often play you like a game, hoping that they’ll get to see your secret wild and crazy side.
As someone who wanted to play by the rules and keep my head down, I viewed these messages as a taunt. All my life, I have wondered what it would take to unleash my cooler, more relaxed alter ego. I might have found my true love and the pressure found in high school halls are more than a decade behind me, but sometimes I still want to see my B version. I don’t need a slow-motion shot of a perfectly svelte variant of me walking down the stairs in a tight dress or a crowd cheering for me at a sporting event.
But the extracts in my kitchen baking drawer are alphabetized, and without my contact lenses or Coke-bottle glasses, I can’t tell the difference between a cat and a waffle iron. Not long ago, I tucked my skirt into my tights and didn’t notice until I had talked to half a dozen people in public. I’m a little goofier after a drink or two, but then I usually fall asleep. I can apply makeup and do my hair, but it won’t stay put. I can put on a dress and heels, but I’ll probably trip and rip it.
I welcome change when it comes to moderating more annoying or demanding aspects of my personality because it helps me to be more relatable and forgiving to others as well as myself. Yet I am, by nature or nurture, forever a nerd. There are some things that will never change, no matter what I do.
