Nerds
Adults don’t understand anymore what it means to be a nerd. Have you noticed this? “Nerd,” somehow, has become a badge of honor. You meet all kinds of people who say proudly that they were nerds in high school. It’s like…anybody who had anything that made them feel different now says that they were a nerd. And that population—the population that thinks that it was different—that’s, like, everybody who went to high school. You know: people who were chubby, people who were in band, people who liked comic books, people who just didn’t…drink… I’ve met people who were actually popular, who actually had a social circle and boyfriends or girlfriends, who now claim they were nerds. That is just…wrong. I believe that we have forgotten the sweaty, unsexy, cringe-inducing face of hardcore nerd-dom.
--Ira Glass, This American Life #338, “The Spokesman”
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