Hi, my name is Jim and I am a geek. “HI JIM!!!!”

Today, I thought I’d expound about the definition of being a geek and why I take pride in calling myself one. This has been a recent discussion between my co-worker/friend and I. He was surprised that I called myself a geek. He was further surprised in that I took pride in it. “Jim, I thought that was just you being a white boy,” he says to me.

This leads into a discussion that I don’t have enough black artists in my CD collection. I mention B.B. King, Miles Davis, Stanley Jordan, Muddy Waters and others. He replies, “Jim, I expect you to have those. They're all instrumentalists, like you. Don’t you have any singers?” (Side note: I am a guitarist of 16 years. End side note.)

“Sade, Barry White. . .” I reply

‘They don’t count either,” he says, “Everybody has those, white or black. That’s what you put on when you want to get laid.” True. Note to self, "Do not put on Sade when the next girl comes over! She’ll be on to your intentions in no time flat."

But I am getting off the subject here. So my friend asks why I consider myself a geek and why am I so ok with it. Hence the subject of this post. Growing up my best friend in the world would say to me, “Jim, you’re the weirdest person I know.” (Come to think of it, he still says that to me.) And I never felt like I fit in to any one clique or group. Part of me thought there must be something wrong with me. Then I found it. I’m just a geek.

First, I think we must differentiate the difference between a geek, nerd, dweeb and dork and any other classification near the bottom of the high school clique ladder.

Now a dork is someone who is just being silly or stupid. This can be temporary as in, “Jim stop it, you’re being such a dork.” Or it can be permanent condition as in, “You hung out with Jim? God, he is always such a dork!”

A dweeb is only a minor step up from a dork. While I don’t think it conjures up the imagery of stupidity as a dork does, a dweeb is just as uncool. And always uncool. However, I think that a dweeb can outgrow his or her "dweebiness." For example, your dweeb kid brother who somehow grows up to becomes the Big Man On Campus, usually after drinking a lot of milk.

Now a nerd is someone we are familiar with. Hell, they even made a series of movies about their revenge. (The first one is classic. The second is passable. The others they made after that, pure drivel.) Now nerds are very smart, usually bookish and always uncool. You remember them in high school. Their senior year they took all Advanced Placement classes. You know they are going to end up with a P.h.d. in advanced chemistry or something, like my high school classmate Paul. Bill Gates, while now a bazillionaire, is still a nerd and still uncool.

Now Steve Jobs at Apple has a bit of coolness to him. That’s why Macs are sleek and sleek looking. That is because Steve Jobs is a geek. Geeks are highly intelligent, however they have the ability to be cool, and get laid. Also, geekness implies an area of expertise. You can have math geeks, computer geeks and tech geeks. Then you have genre specific geeks such as Star Wars and Star Trek geeks. You know, the people who dress as stormtroopers or Klingons. (Ok, so those guys aren’t the paragon of coolness.)

Granted most geeks live in the science, book, math, tech worlds, but you can also have geeks in other “normal” areas such as sports geeks. Like anyone who can tell you who played third base for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1978 is a geek. (Know the movie reference?) And the hosts of “Car Talk” on NPR, a very fun show, are car geeks. If you rarely ever lose at the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, and knew the movie reference I just made, then you are a movie geek.

Also, people can really hide their geekness. My co-worker would not believe that Babyface, famous R&B singer/producer, is a geek. Now Babyface is cool, awesome guy. He writes the sweetest love songs. But you get him talking about recording equipment and microphones and he becomes a total tech/recording geek.

Here are some quotes from some “geek” t-shirts. Most of them come from the website www.thinkgeek.com where geeks can go to purchase stuff to show their pride. Don’t worry if you don’t get all the jokes. But if you do get all the jokes and references, your level of geekness may be too far gone for any hope. . . like mine.


Web Programmer/Internet Geek

roses are #FF0000
violets are #0000FF
all my base
are belong to you

Fantasy Genre Geek

"When you find yourself in the company of a halfling and an ill-tempered Dragon, remember, you do not have to outrun the Dragon....you just have to outrun the halfling."

Math Geek

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't"

Physics Geek

Front: "Schrödinger's Cat is Dead" Back: “Schrödinger's Cat is Not Dead"

Music Geek

E=Fb, The Music Theory of Relativity

Gaming Geek

“Don’t make me go Zelda on your ass!”

Buffy/Angel Geek

“Grr! Arrgh!”, or “Sunnydale High School Alumni”


So why take pride in being a geek? The answer: why not! I know I am different. I know that I will never fit in to any one group completely. I know that I see the world through kaleidoscope tinted glasses and few other people have that prescription. I think that is why I like the stuff at www.thinkgeek.com. It encourages me to be who I am. Who cares if most of the world isn’t going to get the joke that is on my shirt! I can live with that. Most of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull's flock couldn’t understand why he flew so high or fast either.

And as far as being alone in the big world, I take comfort that there are others like me out there. Yes, we are far a few between, but we are there. It just makes the search that more exciting. I was checking some dating sites the other week. Don’t know why I was there. Not that I am searching for a full-on relationship right now. I guess I was just window-shopping. Anyway, I do my searches to see what women are looking for “music” or “guitar” or stuff like that. Then on a whim, I type in “geek”, not expecting any results, because that is what I am. Maybe someone is out there looking for me. (I have yet to try this at Eharmony.com. I am scared that after taking their profile test I will get the reply, “I’m sorry, you are too much of a geek for anyone in our database.”)

Sure enough an ad comes up with the title “I Love Geeks.” I pause. I read the ad and it is as if this girl talked to my sister Katie and asked what would be the best way to describe me. Actually, it was kinda freaky. She writes that she is looking for friendship, but only truly connects with geeks. I read her profile and find we have a lot in common; scarily so.

So I email her. She emails back. Then she sends an email that she won’t be able to talk for awhile because of family stuff. Hopefully in the near future she will get back to me, not worried about it. But the key thing she said was that it made her feel good to know that there were other people like her out there.

“Woke up this morning/ Can’t believe what I saw/ One hundred million bottles, washed up on my shore/ Seems like I am not alone in being alone/ A hundred million castaways looking for our home”

Sting wrote this in the song, “Message in a Bottle.” I guess that was what her ad was. Sending out an S.O.S. to the world to see if there are other souls like her. I think one does this when everyone you encounter in your daily life, your circle of influence, doesn’t get you. Lord knows I have felt that before. The need to feel understood, if only by one other human soul, is so great.

I guess this blog is my “Message in a Bottle.” I don’t know how many of you reading will get everything I write about. But that isn’t the point. The point is to throw the bottle into the ocean, as often as you can. That is your job. When and how the Universe answers back. . .well, that is God’s job.

Well, good night friends. I’m taking a short trip to where geeks, dreamers, and all others like me are welcome, accepted and at home. “Third star on the left. Then straight on till morning.”