Digital Johnny, Real Johnny

Kristina, thank you so much for your confession. All these years I have felt the nerdiness welling up inside me, but I was afraid to speak out. Now, I feel I have that confidence.

Listen up, everybody! I'm a huge nerd too! Despite years of resisting my true nature and hiding behind a mask of glibness and the stylings of cool, I now freely admit it.

Expect to see me playing cell phone computer games, going to bookstore autograph signings, reading service announcements on public transit and generally acting like a total dweeb. My time has come!

Cody, good to know that you're finally admitting what most of us probably already knew! =) I sure as hell did. It is one of your more endearing qualities. I, myself, am a more specific species of nerd. I'm a big gadget nerd. I love shiny expensive toys with plasma screens and all the bells and whistles. Now I just need to find a job that will allow me to comfortably satisfy my addiction so that I don't find myself giving up other things - which some would consider to be more important - like food and shelter.

Law school might up the nerd ante a little, don't you think?
Having to out-nerd all those other would-be lawyers all day long.

I, too, am a great big nerd. I spend my whole life working/thinking about theatre, I like The West Wing, the X-files, TNG...
I may well be more of a geek than a nerd, actually.
But aren't we all? In our own ways? I think we are.
I love you, you big nerd, with my whole geeky heart.

I think for a while some of us fancied ourselves as cool, because we had sex, or smoked pot, or briefly hung out with people who *were* actually cool.

But now that we're adults, we can literally do whatever we want, without anyone's judgement but our own. This is when the realization hits that we've been doing french homework for 6 hours on a beautiful day / going to Richard Lederer book signings / getting mad at people for not recycling / acting like a total dweeb, and not feeling bad about it at all.

This is when it hits us that we like being nerds!

The funniest thing about realizing that you're a bonafide nerd is that you simultaneously realize that you have perverted even the things you used to think of as cool (like drinking, smoking pot, and hanging out with your friends)into some sadistic nerd. Example? Now when you get drunk instead of going wild on the dance floor, you go wild in trivial pursuit... Instead of smoking weed and watching The Wall (admittedly also a tiny bit nerdy), you watch CNN or (even worse) American Idol...Instead of thinking (when you're drunk at the bar) hey that guy is hot maybe I'll hook up with him later, you think don't these people know smoking causes lung cancer? and why don't any of these losers want to talk to me?? Ah I love how law school has sucked away the "cool Susan" (or atleast the Susan who could fool herself into thinking she was cool once and a while) and replaced her with an anal retentive, early twenties-life-crisis, annoylingly opinionated, talking at the speed of light because there is too much damn useless information in her head, slightly bitchy, NERD!

Ok, first about the laptop. I too have been more concerned about my laptop than my general well being for some years now. Recently, my client gave me another laptop, because mine was too 'dirty' to be connected to their perfectly sanitized and controlled network. I now feel it necessary to defend my laptop against the evil SBC laptop. I tell people: mine is faster, mine has more memory, mine has wireless. No one really cares, but I'm such a nerd I can't stop myself.

The nerdy boyfriend and I, as quite the nerdy couple, spent our aniversary walking around San Francisco, with a full-size muni map, discovering new streets, neighborhoods, muni lines, hills, and generally adding to the big map of SF in our heads.

Then, when we got home, someone had to go update his SF SimCity world :)

Yeah, I think you're all nerds too, which is why I love you all so much :) People who think they're actually "cool" are such plastic jackasses. I like people who have the same kind of dorky interests as me, who actually care about intellectual and artistic integrity, who have their own weird obsessions and quirks... but who can also drink like fish and love to dance!!!