Why I like being a nerd

(This essay was written by my niece, Laura Mills, as part of her college application. It struck a chord with me, and I thought others might enjoy it)

A universal part of high school life is the practice of assigning specific social labels to various sub sets of students who were previously homogenous. Thus, a group of five “best friends” who were once bonded throughout their elementary school years by things such as living in the same neighborhood, or their love of softball, suddenly find themselves assigned to a whole new social order.

Right about the time they begin high school these five people who once considered themselves so similar are suddenly tagged as being very different, and their new social labels seem to stick better than any adhesive you can buy at Home Depot.

The lexicon of this phenomenon is as familiar to people who graduated from high school during the Eisenhower Administration as it is to people who cannot remember a time without the internet or cable television.

Even as you read these labels, you will likely - - if only subconsciously - - instantly assign faces from your high school experience into these convenient categories. They are known as the “jocks,” the “princesses,” the “brains,” the “slackers,” and yes, the “nerds.” I am a proud member of the latter of these groups.

While Hollywood has done its best to glorify our particular social subset with movies such as the 1984 classic, Revenge of the Nerds, the Breakfast Club and just about any other John Hughes movie, there are some unavoidable realities and consequences that escape the feeble attempts to recreate high school on the silver screen.

I’m told that life goes on beyond high school, but these labels and their meanings seem to linger much longer than whatever fashion sense seemed so important at the time. Really, who wears bell bottoms anymore? But you probably remember what social group you were assigned to in high school. It’s also quite possible that your label had a profound effect upon every social interaction you’ve had since you dressed in a gown and marched across a gymnasium while Pomp and Circumstance was played on a loudspeaker.

What do you think of when hear the word nerd? Maybe you were a nerd, maybe not, but you probably know a few people who were nerds. From my perspective, nerds are much less likely to need several hours of psychotherapy or court-ordered phone calls with probation officers within ten years of high school graduation.

Nerds, by their very definition, are not afraid of being true to their own essential character. Generally speaking, nerds are less frantic than non-nerds in the race to shed our childhood joys, fantasies and innocence during society’s push toward adulthood. Children don’t worry about what label is affixed to the back of their pants. Children like to play games, and their social awkwardness is forgiven because of their age.

But if a fifteen-year-old likes to play games, doesn’t care about their clothing labels and appears socially awkward, he or she is labeled as a nerd. Apparently, society rejects those who linger in childhood innocence.

Nerds reject the notion that we must conform to any other subset. We are the mongrels, the ones who cannot be so conveniently labeled by our SAT scores, our ability to throw a baseball or the net income of our parents. But there is a price to pay for our refusal to blend in and conform. The grinding wheels of society come to a screeching halt when one of the cogs snaps and refuses to roll along.

Non-nerds are very intolerant of those who refuse to play by the game of life as pre-determined by some sort of universal power that assigned our labels on the day after freshman orientation. Those punishments can be severe, especially when they are placed on the shoulders of young people with still-developing egos.

Even primitive cultures understand the significance and pain of being ostracized. Being cast aside or shunned by your peers is a battle scar that can take years to heal, but I think nerds become stronger as a result of this ultimate rejection.

Consider the words of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “That which does not kill us only makes us stronger.” Some people say high school can be tough. That may be true, but other aspects of the human condition can also make for tough circumstances and are certainly more costly, such as the so-called mid-life crisis.

I don’t know of any statistical evidence to prove this next point, but I’m willing to bet those who were nerds in high school have better developed the skills necessary to adapt to an often cruel world than those jocks and princesses who pine for the glory days of the winning touchdown or being named senior prom queen.

Beauty fades and athletic ability wanes with the passage of time. But the strength and enduring spirit of surviving high school as a nerd can be carried to the grave.

That’s why I am proud of being a nerd, and am very much looking forward to my 25th high school reunion.

I only wonder if the labels will survive.

Health Care: An Inconvienent Truth

The tide has turned on our economy. Millions of Americans are out of work. The real estate market is in the toilet and consumer confidence is at an all time low. Our nation's current economic picture is very similar to what was happening in 1930s Germany, a country that was especially hit hard by the Depression that also rocked America in 1929.

The time is ripe to rise up against the corporations. You know those legalized collections of people who like to make a profit. It seems profit is a bad thing now.

I guess we're lucky that the Democrats have control of our state and national economy because we all know only the Democrats care about the working class...the little people like you and me...

In the midst of all this economic crisis, our country is focused upon "reforming" our nation's health care system. Many people, it seems, are fed up with the greedy insurance companies that would rather focus on profits than healing the sick. But beyond the sound bites and the rhetoric of Nancy Pelosi are some inconvenient truths.

Take, for example, the following nuggets of information that you will not hear from the folks at Change for America or Michael Moore, who is making a pretty penny on his latest movie, which did not use union workers.

According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers’ study, in 2007 health plans had an average profit margin of 3% (THREE PERCENT)

According to a study by RAND Health for the California HealthCare Foundation “…medical costs explain nearly 89 percent of [health plan] revenue increases.”

According to Kaiser Health News (not exactly a bastion of conservative thought), “the major causes of health care’s escalating costs are the rising prices and the increased use of medical services, including hospital stays, prescription drugs, new technologies and doctor visits.”

According to CMS data, over 40 years, the real costs of private health insurance have grown at an annual rate of 5.2 percent. Benefits, as measured by the cost of health care services to members, have grown at real rate of 5.3 percent over the same time period. Administrative costs have grown more slowly, at a real rate of about 4.9 percent since 1966.

According to Kaiser Health News, “With the nation’s health care spending estimated at $2.5 trillion this year, even the elimination of insurers’ profits and executive compensation would lower health care spending by just 0.5 percent.”

In 2006, health plan profits of the top 10 for profit health plans accounted for 0.5%of total health care spending; in 2007, 0.6%; and, in 2008, 0.5%.

Well, there you go. There's no question that our current system needs reform and that working Americans should have access to adequate and safe health care, but Congress ought to focus on solving the problem instead of stirring the class warfare pot. Putting the health insurance companies out of business will create another huge void in the private sector, put millions of people out of work and further grow our escalating federal government that has already put the moves on banking, automotive manufacturing and the mortgage industries.

If you trust the federal government to take care of you, ask yourself: Would I want to live in public housing? Do I prefer public transportation? Even if you answer YES to both of those questions, ask a native American how well it worked out trusting the federal government.

Double Standards & Memory Impairment

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
-- George Santayana

I write these words just one day after the eighth anniversary of September 11, 2001, a day like so many others lately when the fracture between political ideologies in America seems to grow exponentially with each passing hour.

The only plausible theory for this situation involves a chain of events that transpired in a galaxy far, far away…a long time ago and was thus missed by NASA.

Perhaps so many of us were so enraptured with the election of Barack Obama that we failed to notice the giant meteor that was racing toward planet earth on November 6, 2008.

That meteor seemingly collided with something much larger in outer space. The fallout from the collision resulted in an explosion that sent millions and millions of tiny meteor fragments streaming into our atmosphere virtually unnoticed.

Strangely, these pieces of galactic shrapnel landed mostly in the United States, causing significant brain damage to millions of unsuspecting victims who now cannot seem to remember much of what happened before President Obama’s election except to say that it was bad… very bad.

Frankly, I think George W. Bush was – in many ways – the worst president in recent memory. In 2004, I held my nose and voted for John Kerry. Four years later, I held my nose again and voted for John McCain. This piece is important information.

Undoubtedly, many people will dismiss the entirety of this rant simply because its author did not vote for President Obama.

Why would I make such an ignorant, cold-hearted decision? There are plenty of theories out there to explain people like me. Let’s start with some of the most popular.

Theory 1: I am a racist. Hmmm.
Does this mean that Democrats who chose Obama over Clinton during the 2008 primaries were misogynists?

What about all the people who opposed the appointment of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991? Did the meteor shower impair our memories to the extent that we cannot remember the vitriol which surrounded those hearings just 18 years ago?

Frankly, my own memory seems a bit fuzzy because I don’t recall the charge of racism being leveled at then members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Joe Biden or Ted Kennedy. I don’t think they are racists. Do you?

Theory 2: I am a right-wing nut job. We’re getting warmer.

Yes. I am a registered Republican. If you listen to the likes of Chris Matthews, John Stewart or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, you may believe that people like me are uneducated, gun-toting, homophobic, Bible-thumpin’ bigots with big hedge funds and even bigger SUVs.

We don’t care about the environment, civil rights or the plight of the working poor. We fantasize about “Nailin’ Palin” and search the night skies for UFOs that are likely government spy planes. We are angry white men who shoot kittens for sport and chant “Drill, baby drill” while stocking up on ammunition, bottled water and canned goods.

Hmmm. We’ll get back to this a little later, but let’s get back to this apparent loss of our national memory before I forget why I decided to pen this rant.

Earlier this week, President Obama delivered a thought-provoking and inspiring speech to our nation’s school children. In my opinion, it was one of the best speeches to ever come out of the White House, right up there with JFK’s inaugural address and FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech in December 1941.

Some people got upset about the prospect of President Obama using his bully pulpit to somehow “indoctrinate” our nation’s youth about the value of hard work, perseverance and the concept of personal responsibility. They invoked Orwellian images of Big Brother and likened the concept to Hitler’s “brown-shirt” strategy.

We heard about all this because our national media is becoming very adept at downloading YouTube videos and surfing internet blogs. It was, in a single word, nonsense.
But Democrats would never attempt to stifle speech, would they?

Please join me and step into the “Way Back Machine” and set the dials to October 1991. Back then, Republican George Bush Sr. (41) was the president and Congress was controlled by Democrats.

The recent objections to Obama’s speech pale in comparison to what happened in 1991.
Congress called for an investigation and asked the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to determine how much public money was used to deliver the president’s speech. The National Education Association roundly criticized the president. The media went nuts as best evidenced by a front-page story in the Washington Post.

From an article this week in the Washington Examiner, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/When-Bush-spoke-to-students-Democrats-investigated-held-hearings-57694347.html
“ Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.”

And finally, there seems to be a growing call for civility and decorum these days, especially with regard to the President and respect for the office.

That’s a good thing. But let’s again step into the “Way Back Machine” and set the dials for December 2008.

Do you even have a vague sense of the unbridled joy Democratic activists and the media expressed when shoes were thrown at President George W. Bush? What about the angry and hate-filled outbursts that happened all over the country by “Code Pink” members?

I see. We should only be civil sometimes. Come on, really. Don’t ever forget that some animals are more equal than other animals.

And that about wraps it up for this installment of Double Standards and Impaired Memories. In the meantime be wary of space debris and the concept that a two-party political system can do anything more than cast aspersions and doubts about people on the “other side.”


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