Oh honey NO. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A TOTAL TRAGEDY FOR YOU NOT TO BE YOU!!! Not to have your books and your voice in the world??? NO! I'm sorry we were so sad in high school. And I'm so glad you have found deep happiness now. But NO! No no no. Who else but artists are sad enough to create something wonderful? That is our burden and our gift as artists. We feel too much, we're too sad. But then we go on and MAKE THINGS and WRITE BOOKS and it is a GIFT. Love you! <3 Mel
You always find the happiness in all things! I remember once you told me the joy of falling in love and marrying young is that "then you grow old but always have memories of when you were young and hot together" and that always stayed with me, lol. And it's true. We've survived to the other side......
I have always, always self-identified as a nerd, and I have some hidden disabilities that mean I'm definitely not able to keep up with the athletes. However. One of the most impactful and important things about my life/development I suppose, is that I went to a tiny little private school where there were only about 60 of us in the whole high school hall. That meant that even short little me was not only on the JV basketball team, but I was captain for a year. That plus AP classes and the school musical. Because that's what we ALL did. We all had to do everything or it didn't happen. And there were some things that a tiny little school just didn't have, like a football team or an art program or an orchestra, but what we did have we all had.
That, and I was raised by a dad who's two favorite things as a kid and teen were basketball and Dungeons and Dragons. I may never be able to keep up with the athletes, but I really appreciate and am grateful for this reminder that it's not really a dichotomy, and we all have things to learn from each other.
I love that your Dad gave you a sense of the perfect balance that exists within each of us. What a great role model! And I would happily start a school where you have to participate in all things to be a well-rounded human...
i did sports in high school (v., v. badly, btw)... but also drama. and also all the APs (except one because i couldn't do the disection thing) and the valedictorian... and was totallly the only greater metropolitan area top-o-the-class senior to go to ART school. so i've never been in either camp of nerds and jocks.
but yeah: i never really appreciated the discipline the athletes put into their "craft" as well. and how did old movies get the NERD thing so wrong? WHY ARE THEY EVIL NOW?
what you said about wanting validation makes total sense: but why world domination and destruction of the rest of us?
I think I had a relatively unique experience in high school, and by that I mean my high school's social system wasn't the same as many others. We didn't have specific cliques. Music and drama kids would hang out with jocks and sometimes they would be both theatre kid and jock. People made friends with people in classes and in extra-curricular activities. In grade 9 I was on the swim team (looking back the only reason I stopped is because I had a bad experience at my first ever swim meet) and all through high school I did orchestra (violin) and musical theatre. I have a friend that did music, theatre, and wrestling. I never had a high school experience where people were put into boxes and only friends with people in the same box. From what I've heard, that's rare and I wish it weren't rare. Of corse my school did still have the "popular kids" but those kids tended to be theatre kids who also had other interests, whether it was academics or sports. I was not a popular kid but I had a good group of friends. A group that started with me meeting a few of them in swim practice and then expanded with people in band. In my mind there are no jocks or nerds just people who gravitate to different preferred forms of exercise (whether they've discovered theirs or not) and different topics that they want to learn about (some topics considered more "academic" than others, but all complex in their own ways).
Several years ago I joked that Revenge of the Nerds should be remade just like this, with the roles flipped now that the masculine bros were being made fun of and the tech guys were seeing all the glory. I wonder if this hasn't gone on since the Neanderthal, and the roles haven't flipped every so often like Earth's magnetic poles.
I also feel anything that begins as an alternative once it becomes mainstream kind of gets it's message watered down like goth or grunge since some people just like the clothes without learning the history once it becomes mainstream and I guess it kind of teaches you anything you where told was uncool as a kid could become cool if it had a certain company logo behind it
I have a close friend who's really into fitness but also shares some interests of mine people would consider nerdy? And actually, I haven't really seen much of the jock or popular mean kid stereotype in my personal experience. If anything, it's the "smart" people whom I see have their own little following of worshippers and they put down others who aren't like them or at their level, to be honest. And people are often combinations of things anyway. I didn't really care for school clique or school type stereotypes because I have often seen things happen the opposite way.
You're definitely on to something... despite having an athletic build, I sucked at sports in high school and would have definitely been the nerd. My dad was a farm kid working instead of playing, so he didn't toss a ball around in the yard with his kids; we didn't have a sports-centered masculine bond. Since I needed glasses in elementary school and nobody knew it until sixth grade, I never learned to hit or catch... and got beaned by a softball in the face because I couldn't see it coming. After that, I had a healthy fear of anything coming right at me at a high rate of speed!
But being gay, I also knew I liked the jocks, at least visually. AFTER college, I started working out to finally take advantage of the build I'd been genetically blessed to have. Now I have a body that I'd have been proud to have in my twenties and should have started working on sooner... but is definitely much older.
Our culture has morphed into one divided not so much by the nerd/jock divide, because as you noted it's getting harder to tell them apart. We're in the age of the bro/snowflake divide. I think a lot of that is because gay culture made looking like an athlete a very important thing socially... buff, manscaped, ready to flex and pose in your gym-mirror selfie posted to Insta.
Women started buying gay porn because they liked that look. Straight men noticed.
What you think, how you treat others, what your values are ... these are the real divide now.
Are you a bro, who is all man, ready to discriminate against anyone who is not like you... or are you a softy lib snowflake who turns his back on his testosterone and is less of a *real* man.
I love how you followed the tea leaves to the real problem beneath all of this -- that there is a desire to shortcut to looking like an athlete without being an athlete in order to get all the 'advantages' that the jocks supposedly had once upon a time. It's almost like they're reenacting the movies they saw as kids. And as a result it's infected all of culture.
Oh honey NO. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A TOTAL TRAGEDY FOR YOU NOT TO BE YOU!!! Not to have your books and your voice in the world??? NO! I'm sorry we were so sad in high school. And I'm so glad you have found deep happiness now. But NO! No no no. Who else but artists are sad enough to create something wonderful? That is our burden and our gift as artists. We feel too much, we're too sad. But then we go on and MAKE THINGS and WRITE BOOKS and it is a GIFT. Love you! <3 Mel
You always find the happiness in all things! I remember once you told me the joy of falling in love and marrying young is that "then you grow old but always have memories of when you were young and hot together" and that always stayed with me, lol. And it's true. We've survived to the other side......
I have always, always self-identified as a nerd, and I have some hidden disabilities that mean I'm definitely not able to keep up with the athletes. However. One of the most impactful and important things about my life/development I suppose, is that I went to a tiny little private school where there were only about 60 of us in the whole high school hall. That meant that even short little me was not only on the JV basketball team, but I was captain for a year. That plus AP classes and the school musical. Because that's what we ALL did. We all had to do everything or it didn't happen. And there were some things that a tiny little school just didn't have, like a football team or an art program or an orchestra, but what we did have we all had.
That, and I was raised by a dad who's two favorite things as a kid and teen were basketball and Dungeons and Dragons. I may never be able to keep up with the athletes, but I really appreciate and am grateful for this reminder that it's not really a dichotomy, and we all have things to learn from each other.
I love that your Dad gave you a sense of the perfect balance that exists within each of us. What a great role model! And I would happily start a school where you have to participate in all things to be a well-rounded human...
i did sports in high school (v., v. badly, btw)... but also drama. and also all the APs (except one because i couldn't do the disection thing) and the valedictorian... and was totallly the only greater metropolitan area top-o-the-class senior to go to ART school. so i've never been in either camp of nerds and jocks.
but yeah: i never really appreciated the discipline the athletes put into their "craft" as well. and how did old movies get the NERD thing so wrong? WHY ARE THEY EVIL NOW?
what you said about wanting validation makes total sense: but why world domination and destruction of the rest of us?
It was so binary back then! Jock, nerd, and those in between...
I think I had a relatively unique experience in high school, and by that I mean my high school's social system wasn't the same as many others. We didn't have specific cliques. Music and drama kids would hang out with jocks and sometimes they would be both theatre kid and jock. People made friends with people in classes and in extra-curricular activities. In grade 9 I was on the swim team (looking back the only reason I stopped is because I had a bad experience at my first ever swim meet) and all through high school I did orchestra (violin) and musical theatre. I have a friend that did music, theatre, and wrestling. I never had a high school experience where people were put into boxes and only friends with people in the same box. From what I've heard, that's rare and I wish it weren't rare. Of corse my school did still have the "popular kids" but those kids tended to be theatre kids who also had other interests, whether it was academics or sports. I was not a popular kid but I had a good group of friends. A group that started with me meeting a few of them in swim practice and then expanded with people in band. In my mind there are no jocks or nerds just people who gravitate to different preferred forms of exercise (whether they've discovered theirs or not) and different topics that they want to learn about (some topics considered more "academic" than others, but all complex in their own ways).
I wish I could have gone to your school! But I think it's more what life is these days. Less silos than way back when
Several years ago I joked that Revenge of the Nerds should be remade just like this, with the roles flipped now that the masculine bros were being made fun of and the tech guys were seeing all the glory. I wonder if this hasn't gone on since the Neanderthal, and the roles haven't flipped every so often like Earth's magnetic poles.
Something I wrote about nerd culture
In the world of fandom, love makes you an outcast,
Adoring the things others can't understand,
You wear your heart on your sleeve, in the form of plastic,
Characters from stories, from worlds far away.
But in this world of capitalism, there's a catch—
You dream of fame, of riches, and what you'll buy,
Shirts and plushies, lunchboxes with faces that know you,
Vinyl records spinning the songs of a world you'll never enter.
You spend your wealth, chasing a phantom,
A love unreciprocated, but no less real,
For in your purchases, in each new possession,
You draw closer to a love that’s just a figment,
A love that’ll never speak back,
But always fills the emptiness with its silent presence.
I also feel anything that begins as an alternative once it becomes mainstream kind of gets it's message watered down like goth or grunge since some people just like the clothes without learning the history once it becomes mainstream and I guess it kind of teaches you anything you where told was uncool as a kid could become cool if it had a certain company logo behind it
I feel like nerd culture began to be more embrace when people realize they can profit off it because yes nerds spend a lot of money like a lot
I have a close friend who's really into fitness but also shares some interests of mine people would consider nerdy? And actually, I haven't really seen much of the jock or popular mean kid stereotype in my personal experience. If anything, it's the "smart" people whom I see have their own little following of worshippers and they put down others who aren't like them or at their level, to be honest. And people are often combinations of things anyway. I didn't really care for school clique or school type stereotypes because I have often seen things happen the opposite way.
Besides, people change and are more complex than labels like need, jock, etc.
You're definitely on to something... despite having an athletic build, I sucked at sports in high school and would have definitely been the nerd. My dad was a farm kid working instead of playing, so he didn't toss a ball around in the yard with his kids; we didn't have a sports-centered masculine bond. Since I needed glasses in elementary school and nobody knew it until sixth grade, I never learned to hit or catch... and got beaned by a softball in the face because I couldn't see it coming. After that, I had a healthy fear of anything coming right at me at a high rate of speed!
But being gay, I also knew I liked the jocks, at least visually. AFTER college, I started working out to finally take advantage of the build I'd been genetically blessed to have. Now I have a body that I'd have been proud to have in my twenties and should have started working on sooner... but is definitely much older.
Our culture has morphed into one divided not so much by the nerd/jock divide, because as you noted it's getting harder to tell them apart. We're in the age of the bro/snowflake divide. I think a lot of that is because gay culture made looking like an athlete a very important thing socially... buff, manscaped, ready to flex and pose in your gym-mirror selfie posted to Insta.
Women started buying gay porn because they liked that look. Straight men noticed.
What you think, how you treat others, what your values are ... these are the real divide now.
Are you a bro, who is all man, ready to discriminate against anyone who is not like you... or are you a softy lib snowflake who turns his back on his testosterone and is less of a *real* man.
I love how you followed the tea leaves to the real problem beneath all of this -- that there is a desire to shortcut to looking like an athlete without being an athlete in order to get all the 'advantages' that the jocks supposedly had once upon a time. It's almost like they're reenacting the movies they saw as kids. And as a result it's infected all of culture.