A couple of days ago I gave in to some of my nerdiest pleasures and it was gooooood.
I was already a nerd as a teenager, but I didn’t embrace it back then because, well, as basically almost everyone in this world, I hoped I could get to be one of the cool persons. Perhaps something I could tell Yits from the past if I ever got the chance of sending myself some sort of message across the barriers of time, it would be to feel comfortable with what you are, and embrace your quirky persona, because other people like you out there are looking for someone who might feel as uncomfortable as them and being different is the only normal thing, to be honest. All you have to do is realize that.
So, I liked being a nerd back in my youth and I love being a nerd now. A good nerd must know not all nerds all the same and there are hundreds of nerd categories. I am the type of nerd that enjoys some Anime, but honestly not all of it; I love both console and PC gaming; I like sci-fi, some geeky devices, nerdy board games and many other things.
Last Saturday, my husband and I were invited to a friend’s house, who happens to be a Magic the Gathering player. In preparation for this Magic… gathering – lol? – Oscar and my husband got a box of booster packs of the Ixalan expansion and we spent a couple of hours opening and going through packs – have you ever done that? Spent hours just checking your new cards, putting together a new deck in your mind, pondering if it should be white and green, blue and red or just black?
So, after spending a couple of (very enjoyable) hours doing that, we started playing. As it usually happens with these freshly baked decks, with which one is not very familiar and that one has not finely tuned with the number of cards or the extra elements not particular to the expansion but to the player’s private collection, some matches were won and some matches were lost. I don’t think there was a definite winner. Well, you could say that if the goal of the game was to have fun, then we were all winners. But as players with this competitive nature of us, we were all losers. Very entertained and satisfied losers, but losers in the end.
Later on some of us played a couple of matches of Scrabble, then got all together again and played Risk, and by the end of the day, when there were 7 or 8 nerd-like creatures gathered under the same roof, we decided playing poker (Texas holdem style) was the more convenient option, so we could all play and have fun. I know, this last game is not very nerdy by definition, but who cares? I had a great time.
And even nicer was to find ourselves already making nerd plans for the future. How about a LAN party? We could play Age of Empires… Which is your favorite AoE? Because everyone seems to have a preference for AoE 2, although I have no problem playing AoE 3. I might be one of the few persons who doesn’t mind. And of course, the perfect opportunity to spread the word of our Lord Gaben and see if some new souls can be dragged into the world of Dota.
I love being a nerd and not caring people will notice I am a hardcore nerd anymore. I have grown up to realize there is a time and a place for everything – I can be a formal business woman when needed; a strict or fun-loving mom depending on my child’s behavior; an art connoisseur (connoisseuse would be correct, strictly speaking), a wine aficionado or a creative story teller… years ago I accepted myself as a product, and so I could see I was actually targeted to different audiences, depending on how I marketed myself. I didn’t have to overly specialize in one specific area if I didn’t feel like doing it. I just had to choose my target and take care of how to address my audience in turn so we can all feel comfortable and not alienated. As a nerd, I used to feel people didn’t understand what I was talking about, and I tended to not talk to people, so finding a niche where you can be as nerd as you want to is just wonderful. Am I right?
