NERD!

There are a lot of things that have been rattling around in my head for the last 10 weeks that I wanted to write about, but never did because a) school and b) the wordpress issue. So for a while, you might actually get fairly frequent posts. Maybe.

For now, I think I would explain the name - PirateGeek. Where did it come from? It's quite simple actually - I dig pirates, and I'm a geek. I'm sure I'm not alone with my affection for buckling swashes and things like Smurf hats. In fact, I know I'm not since pirategeek.blogspot.com was taken. Hence the addition of 9 (high school softball number in case you were wondering). I guess that's about the whole of it. To me, it kind of represents not being afraid to be yourself. Ten years ago, I never would have referred to myself as a geek, and I certainly wouldn't have been proud of that. Ten years changes a lot, though. Also, pirates didn't become cool until 2003 with the release of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

I'm actually quite sure that this is one of the many reasons why I want to teach high school: to let kids know that it's cool to be yourself. It makes me quite sad how desperate some teens are to please their peers mostly because pleasing those peers usually involves being stupid. I don't know when stupid became cool, but it certainly happened sometime in the 20th century. I'm not exaggerating about this either. There are kids in the classes I observe that are very intelligent, but they either a) intentionally do bad on assignments, b) don't do the assignments or c) act like idiots in order to hide their intelligence so as not to be labeled as a geek, nerd, dork, brain, whatev.

Who's idea was this? Really. I would love to know what person started the thought process of, "That person's smart. What a loser. I'm going to make fun of them and belittle them to make myself feel better." I guess that's the key isn't it? People make fun of other people usually to make themselves feel better. Lame. I'm not saying I never make fun of other people, but when I do it's usually thrown right back at me and I'm ok with that, and I've certainly never made fun of someone for being smarter than me. That's dumb.

Could you imagine if we were only able to ridicule people using the truth? "OOooooh. You're all smart. You're probably gonna be really successful and make a lot more money than me. I'm probably gonna be flipping your burgers someday." At least it's more creative than yelling "NERD" at someone. Speaking of, quick sidenote, check out www.thenerdmachine.com. Cool stuff for us nerds. Wear it loud. Wear it proud, folks.

Anyway, back to the task at hand, it is my hope that, as a teacher, I might be able to impart at least some wisdom on these youngsters. Maybe I'll actually find a way to show them that being yourself is far cooler than pretending to be something you're not which, incidentally, is exactly what the majority of the "cool" kids do.

As Dr. Seuss says, "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter." Rock on. If someone has a problem with my Smurf hat and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt, they can go hang out with the other mean, old bitters.