“I’m Nobody, who are you? / Are you a Nobody too? / Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t Tell!”
~ Emily Dickinson
Being nerdy now carries a cachet of coolness, even universality. “We’re All Nerds Now,” a New York Times headline declared a few years ago. This is good news, though belated in my opinion as a fifty-something. I like to think I was ahead of my time, because I was a nerd when it was not cool. At all.
I wasn’t great at math or science, so I wasn’t the kind of nerd who became the class valedictorian—more’s the pity. I was in band and wrote for the school paper. I squeaked by in Algebra I and II. I made it through Chem I because the smartest kid in the class was my lab partner—and I wrote about it for the school literary anthology. Yeah, that kind of nerd. You know, book smart.
I spent a lot of time with my nose in various books, or newspapers, or magazines. If I had time on my hands at breakfast, I was probably reading the back of the cereal box. If I was supposed to be cleaning my room or taking out the trash, I was probably reading then too. In grade school I created a library under my bed, stocking it with stacks of books and a flashlight. I dreamed of becoming a librarian. We had no shortage of books in our house. When I finished reading my books, I read my mom’s, or I read my favorites all over again. Or both.
By the time I was in high school, my head was full of obscure words, marginally useful facts, and phrases from nineteenth century novels—none of which fit very well into teenage conversation, but I did try. I have the embarrassing memories to prove it. I also may have had a few anachronistic expectations about falling in love (see again nineteenth-century novels) but those gave me a healthy skepticism for what passed for romance among my classmates.
Mamas, do let your babies grow up to be book smart. There is an upside. Also some downside.
Back then, being called “book smart” came with a condescension that implied a lack of other more important kinds of smarts. I know now that book smarts, street smarts, common sense, and other kinds of sense are not mutually exclusive. I had to earn some of those smarts from living life too, not just reading about it. But then and now, reading—while putting knowledge into my head—was also showing me how much was out there in the wide world waiting to be discovered and lived.
It’s now cool to be geeky, nerdy, dorky, and book smart, and I say not a moment too soon. Etymologists give much of the credit for this welcome cultural shift to the personal technology explosion of the early 2000’s, which turned a few nerds into billionaires and all of us into potential computer geeks—or wannabees.
Thanks to those nerds and their creations, we’re all more free to aspire to our own brand of nerdiness, making the world a kinder, better place for those of us who have always been proud to be book smart.
Terri Barnes is a writer, book editor, and book lover. She is the author of Spouse Calls: Messages from a Military Life.