The Geek Squad

Nerd. Dork. Geek. Whatever you call it, whatever it actually means, that's who I am. And apparently I'm in good company.

Yesterday as I was reading about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, I had this sudden memory of trying to insult my brother by telling him that no one liked Presidents named Andrew. Effective, probably not. Nerdy, yes indeed. I remember trying to memorize the Presidents and learning obscure facts about them out of the kid's dictionary I got when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. Just like I remember trying to memorize all the symbols of the periodic table, competing as the only girl on the district math team, watching jeopardy instead of cartoons with my brother and cousin, naming countries alphabetically on long car rides, being on the robotics team (ok, so that was only 5 years ago) and more.

Just when I thought I was a very strange kid, I learned yesterday that my roommate also tried learning the periodic table when she was younger (sorry for shattering your image of coolness). Even funnier, was that I found out today that my friend not only knew the symbols, but could fill in the entire periodic table...though he claims that he only did this because they got chocolate as a reward. As he was sharing this story, another friend said that she learned all the state capitals and facts about the states because she got a popsicle everytime she got had more facts- she says she got a lot of popsicles. The final member of our nerd support group confessed that she knew what pi as far as the calculator would tell her.

Are people who go to school forever, like we law students, more nerdy than the general population? I actually think everyone has "nerdy" elements to them, some of us just embrace it more than others.

(PS. the actor who played Steve Urkel went to UCLA. Go Bruins!)