Nerddom

In addition to being a hipster, I am also what many would call a nerd. I realize that the term nerd has just in recent years become social accepted. It was a long slow process, that I have witnessed first hand. It all started maybe when my generation was in, let's say middle school, when it became a funny thing to do to dress up as nerds for spirit weeks. Now of course these costumes were way exaggerated, but they were mostly based on the nerds on Saved By the Bell. Because that is what we watched growing up. Of course we all jumped at the chance to dress up as nerds, because we all secretly wanted to be nerds. We had our nerdy things we secretly loved, now of course it wasn't as exaggerated as the nerds in Saved By the Bell, because we know now that that was a caricature.  The days would wear on and after school we would retire our costumes until the next spirit week, and then reminisce about the time we could reveal the exaggerated version of our true selves. Once the photos were developed we would flip through all the pictures of us with all our friends making stereotypical nerd poses, perhaps someday our children will look back on our pictures and see it for what this pictures really are: Offensive to Nerds, Nerd-Face. When we looked at the pictures we saw that we were, if just for a day, not alone in our nerddom. 

Back in those days true nerds were defined more by their academic interests such as math club and chess team, again, I am basing this almost solely on the nerds in Saved by the Bell, with a pinch of Revenge of the Nerds, a dash of Steve Urkle, and a sprinkling of George McFly, so they were also into the really far out there sci-fi. about the only constant between the nerds of our youth and the nerds of today is D&D, which I am proud to say that I have played. But in those days, we were into things like comic books (my interest in comic books is rekindling, but they are really expensive) particularly for me X-Men. I remember having a really big falling out with one of my friends because he told me, in an effort to try and impress me, which the concept of anyone feeling the need to impress ME seems ludacris, that at home he had purchased a  musical compilation of the X-Men singing popular ballads of the day. AND I BELIEVED HIM, because I wanted it to be true, still part of me wishes it could be true! Every day at recess I questioned him on who sang what song, the only song I really remember asking him about was who sang "I Would Do Anything For Love" by Meatloaf. And without missing a beat he replied, "Gambit, who else?" and my jaw dropped down in wonderment! I was in awe that he possessed such a treasure! Had I done a better job of convincing my parents the need of signing up for AOL and the potential necessity of the internet I could have just surfed over to AOL KEYWORD: Circuit City to search for said album. I should have asked him to let me borrow the cassette tape! So I continued to ask him who sang what song, and I think eventually he realized that there was no such way that such an album could reasonably exist because he had told me like 20 different songs, and each time saying, "Yeah dude, Beast totally sings it and its on the B-Side!" well I must not have been a very good nerd, at least the stereotypical Math kind, because I couldn't see that it just didn't add up. The next day, my buddy comes out to recess to confess to me that he did not, in fact own a tape of the X-Men singing Power Ballads. I feel the need to point out that this was in Elementary school, I know I said earlier that it all really started in middle school, but this particular story took place in Elementary School. So he told me, "Cameron, I've been lying to you, I don't really own this tape of The X-Men singing Power Ballads, I'm sorry. Can you stop asking me who sings "More Than Words" And I was devastated! I took a few moments to calm the commotion of questions rising up in my brain. After a few moments I said, "OK, wow, um... Why did you lie about it?" he told me it was because he wanted me to like him. After a few more moments of trying to piece together this act of betrayal I knew what the next question I had to ask him was. "OK, so you don't really own a cassette tape of The X-Men singing Power Ballads" I took a deep breath, planning my next words very carefully. "Do you know where we can buy it then?"