Science Fiction

When you have an unhealthy obsession for the future possibilities of scientific advancement coupled with a personal reality so lackluster and undesirable that you spend the better part of your days doing everything in your power, short of downing a gallon of bleach, to escape it…what better avenue out of the realm of the real than science fiction?

In all honesty, there is nothing inherently wrong with or nerdy about science fiction. As a matter of fact, it is, in theory, pretty cool. Everyone likes high-tech gadgets that make our lives easier (like this...WAY better than a Star Trek communicator). Everyone likes the idea of traveling to far off exotic locations as yet uncharted by man (case in point). Do I even NEED to mention all the intergalactic booty acquired by Captain Kirk (she looks ready)???!!! What’s cooler than that? No, dear friends. Science fiction, in and of itself, is pretty boss.

The problem arises when one moves from admiring the fruits of and characters within science fiction to believing one actually has access to the fruits of and has become one or more of the characters within science fiction. And that, ebonerd, is where we find YOU! The plastic thing you bought from the toy section in Target IS NOT a light saber!!! (WTF?) Klingon IS NOT a real language!!!...or people group for that matter. (I stand corrected. *rolls eyes*) And, no matter how well you can speak in gibberish, you ARE NOT nor will you EVER BE Jar Jar Binks (unless you're this guy. SHEESH!). Furthermore, your failure to admit these truths serve only to insure that your mating options will remain limited to the chunky Princess Leia (sexy) you met at the latest gathering of freaks you attended (sci-fi convention for the normal readers)…or the life-sized, free-standing cut-out of Ohura you’ve been keeping in your room.

For making freaks even freakier…Science Fiction…we salute you! Keep US nerdy. (and celibate.)

Puberty

No matter how talented you are, how good you look, or how charming and charismatic you may be…in high school it only takes one flaw to pluck you from the mountaintop of popularity and banish you to the valley of social obscurity and ridicule…or as we like to call it…Ebonerddom. True, genetics may show favoritism to some by insuring that they’ll always be stronger, faster, and better looking (case in point); and show disdain for others by insuring that they’ll always have that lazy eye, or a muffin top, or just simply that they’ll always look like their face was on fire at some point and someone tried to put it out with an ice pick (case in point)…but good old puberty is always there to serve as the great equalizer. With her blatant disregard for discretion and appropriateness of time, puberty is always there to rear her ugly, under-developed head and knock even the coolest kid down a few pegs. Sure little Miss “Captain of the Cheerleading Squad” has rich parents, a killer wardrobe, and the face of a Nubian goddess, but she won’t be all that on the day of the big game when the tissue she’s been stuffing her bra with (because good old puberty has decided to slow her development) falls out just as she’s topping the pyramid, or on School Picture Day when her silky smooth face suddenly develops a zit so big and elaborate that you’d swear it was growing a tooth and an independent personality (just imagine this on some chick's forehead). And maybe Mr. “Star Quarterback” has the car everyone wants, the girl everyone wants, and biceps the size of small under-developed countries…but it’s hard to stay the “big man on campus” when all the fellaz are changing in the locker room and it becomes evident that he’s the only one in a room of 17 year olds who’s balls haven’t dropped yet (since I can't show you what tiny balls look like...uh...this is what third-world country sized arms look like).

Make no mistake, however, fellow Ebonerd. Puberty does keep the cool humble…but she is no friend to you either. She may succeed at making sure the social elite get knocked down a time or two, but she’s even MORE effective in making sure the Ebonerd NEVER rises above his or her position of social ineptitude. You THOUGHT it was bad that you were in the glee club…and that you have to do the lead part of the production in front of the entire school assembly…AND that you have to do it in a lycra onesie (this is you)…but just wait until good old puberty shows up in the performance to make sure your voice cracks like a handful of walnuts right in the middle of your big finale solo. Or you were convinced that nothing was worse than the hand-me-downs you are forced by your fiscally responsible parents to wear (which had you looking like this...but in 1999), but puberty says…nothing goes better with outdated clothes than a fresh case of severe acne. Or maybe you even thought that your interest in stamp collecting, cultural anthropology and the metabolic migration practices of the tsetse fly were socially polarizing enough, but now thanks to puberty delaying the introduction of bass into your voice, whenever you bore some normal person to death with your conversation drawn from said topics you get to do it in a Minnie Ripperton-esque tone (this'll give you an idea of what I'm talking about), despite the fact that you're a 17 year-old boy.

Ah puberty…for dragging the high low and taking the low…uh…even lower...we salute you. Keep US nerdy.

P.E./GYM CLASS click here:

In high school, hiding one’s nerdiness is not actually as hard as most people make it out to be. All you really have to be is quiet. True…silence will never get you to the “cool kids” table…nor will you ever be that person that all the other members of your gender wanna be, and all members of the opposite gender wanna be with, without the frequent vocal expressions of cockiness and confidence demonstrated by the social elite. (to sum it up...you'll never be these guys) And that’s fine. Your average Ebonerd dreams of such social glory, but is content to reside in the social realm of that average kid that doesn’t get jumped every Tuesday. If that’s all you need…just be quiet and people will have no idea exactly the level of ebonerdiness in which you operate. That is…until PE period. There’s something about tube socks that extend to your “neither regions” and stopping every 5 minutes during a run to gasp for air and reach for your inhaler (not cool) that is more revealing of your ebonerd status than even your most detailed account of last night’s episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Yes, conceal it as well and as much as you wish throughout the rest of the day, but when the coach yells “Hit the court!”, your pathetic, underdeveloped sense of athleticism will yell to everyone around, “while you’re at home shooting hoops with the cool kids (this is how you roll), I’m at home shooting at level 5 elven mages with 5 attack 3 magic points on Final Fantasy with the kid with one big shoe.” (this is how I roll) And even if, in an effort to survive the ridicule that comes with being exposed as the Ebonerd you truly are, you’ve learned to ball…and breathe for that matter…like the normal kids, there’s still one thing that will ALWAYS give you away. You probably have to wear those “coke-bottle” thick, athletic prescription glasses. Sorry kiddo…no one thinks you’re Kareem Abdul Jabbar…they just think you’re a big nerd. PE/gym class…we salute you! Keep US nerdy.

Overbearing Mothers

If a home with an under-involved father is a potential breeding ground of the hoodlum, one in which there is an over-involved mother is most definitely the incubator of the Ebonerd. As you are reading this post, in homes all across America right now, there are good-intentioned mothers who are audibly recalling every embarrassing nickname born by their children in a room full of their friends (which usually ends in this), or refusing to allow their daughter to wear anything but church dresses to high school in the fear she will be like those “fast-girls” (did you ever look like this?), or insisting that her son add ballet to his list of after-school activities so he’ll be well-rounded (but he pretty much just ends up like this). Never seeming to know what not to say, when not to say it, and to whom not to say it to, the overbearing mother, who is bent on preparing her babies for adulthood, always seems to forget one important fact. In order for her babies to make it to their well-equipped adulthood, they first have to survive adolescence…and all her conscious efforts to assure the former are only matched by her unconscious actions that prevent the latter. Overbearing mothers, we salute you. Keep US nerdy.