The nerd test

Are you a nerd? If you feel unsure, here’s a handy diagnostic:

If you’ve paid even a little attention to popular culture during your lifetime, you will know how to interpret your own answers. And whether you’re a nerd or not, I have a book for you: American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent (Scribner, 2008).

The book will take you 224 pages into the guts of nerd history, examining the technically minded horde high-watering their way through high school vilification into adult positions of financial security. What makes them nerds? Are all nerds born nerds, or do they become nerds to flee from life’s disorder? Why do nerds play Dungeons and Dragons? Why do nerds sometimes lack empathy? How does nerdism relate to the autism spectrum? Why do we mock nerds? How long have we been doing it?

I realized early in Nugent’s book that he would never classify me as a nerd. My mathematical inability, feeling-centered reasoning, and bent for artistic rebellion disqualified me right away. But I kept reading, for three reasons.

First, Nugent is a good writer and a shrewd tour guide. He walks us through history, connecting seemingly tangential characters like Teddy Roosevelt and Victor Frankenstein to the formation of nerd identity. Plus Nugent lets us peek into his own painful nerd past. We see him as an 11-year-old immersed in his “rich fantasy life,” in which he “carried a glowing staff” but on earth ran to class, doubled over with elbows sticking out, pursued by a gaggle of jocks mimicking his absurd gait.

“Nobody raised serious objections,” he writes, “when every once in a while somebody hit me in the crotch with a clarinet case or hockey stick. All of which is to say my journalistic objectivity with regard to my subject matter is seriously compromised. But I am trying my best.”

Second, I kept reading because nerds are innately interesting. Some nerds believe so fiercely in computer mechanization that they look forward to the day when robots supplant humans as a species. Some nerds form societies based on alternate realities in which following strict rules makes belonging possible. This, argues Nugent, explains the nerd’s attraction to Tolkien: An elf is always an elf.

Third, and most importantly, I kept reading because the story of the outcast is the story of us all. Regardless of the length of your pants, the weight of your eyeglasses, and the arrangement of your brain molecules, you know what it means to feel rejected and to seek a reality where you fit. So American Nerd is a worthwhile read—if only as an exercise in compassion.