I want to talk about nerds.

I’ve been studying that subject recently. Nerds are indeed wondrously complex.

Don’t laugh. Writers and artists study stuff all the time. We soak up life with our sensory receptors. We meditate on nerd-dom.

And if this sounds like a nerd wrote it, I confess it. I was a teenage nerd. I think most artists were nerds. If you had an artistic temperament, you were probably emotional and vulnerable. Now does that sound like the description of a jock? No, if you were that weird, you were a prime candidate for a nerd.

So, what exactly is a nerd?

It’s hard to define, but most of us knew a nerd or two, at least in school. The movie “The Revenge of the Nerds” (1984) has a great cross section of various nerd types. Yet few of us would admit to being nerds ourselves.

I wanted more research, so I polled my neighbors:

“Who me?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I dated a nerd once.”

“The guys my mother wanted me to marry were all nerds.”

“I was too quiet in school.”

“I was a jockette.”

“I was a jock, but I turned into an animal.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Are you talking to me?”

Sigh. It seems none of my neighbors were ever nerds. So, I broadened my polling (and here the names are changed to protect the nerds).

Jenny said: “I don’t think so. I was really smart. Third in my class. But I wasn’t popular.”

“Did you have your glasses, then, Jenny?”

“Yep, with really big frames! Braces too.”

Jenny, you were a nerd! Of course, it’s hard to tell, not having seen you at that age. But you check the right boxes.

Especially the unpopular part. Nerds are often outcasts because of their eccentricity. They have no friends except occasionally another nerd. If misery lacks company, so do nerds.

They sometimes band together, but never in more than twos or threes. Think about it. Ever see a pack of nerds?

“I wasn’t,” said Smokey. “I used to cut school a lot.”

Smokey’s right. Cutting is cool. If you’re cool, you’re not a nerd.

Bert seemed almost eager to qualify. After a promising start, he admitted:

“I was president of my class. What does that make me?”

Out, Bert. You can’t be elected to anything and be a nerd, except maybe “Most Likely To Remain A Nerd” or president of Nerds Anonymous.

You can be smart and be a nerd. Really smart people often are. They spend so much time studying, they develop few social graces.

But you don’t have to be smart. You can be odd in other ways; fashion, for example. Buttoning your collar with no tie qualifies. So does carrying a “fag bag” (what we called a briefcase at my school).

Snorting through your nose while laughing, qualifies too.

I did all of those. I was quite the nerd.

“I felt like an outcast my freshman year,” said Ariel.

Feeling like an outcast is a sure sign. And you begin to justify that feeling with actions, often becoming a loner.

Nerds tend to be thought of as oblivious to their own nerdiness, merrily stumbling down the path of nerd-life, happily snorting the way, unaware of others’ reactions.

But don’t be fooled. A nerd knows exactly what being picked last feels like. What it feels like when your team captain turns his back in embarrassment because he is forced to pick you for his team.

The nerd is well aware when a popular girl, standing with a group of friends, closes him out. And he is aware of the snickers of onlookers.

He just develops a thick skin. He somehow wants something else more than he wants to conform. He knows if he leaves his briefcase and unbuttons his collar, he might be cool. But he seems to want something else, just to be noticed somehow, by somebody, for something.

My friend, Errol Strider, wrote a poem called “They.” It starts:

Who is this “They” that we appear before?

You know, the They of “what will They think?”

How do they get to be “Theys?”

That’s what I’d like to know.

After all, didn’t you sometimes, somewhere in life, feel left out, weird, an outcast? Didn’t you feel like “they” were watching and judging you? Weren’t you, too, for one brief shining moment … a nerd?

Ronn Kistler is the author of 9 books for teachers on arts-in-education, and over 50 curriculum-oriented plays for young people and family audiences; he served as Planetarium Coordinator at Western Kentucky University until his retirement in 2019.