Skip to main content

Labels


The other day someone asked me what I was like in High school. I said I was a rather strange combination of nerd and jock. Is that even possible? Can someone be a nerd and a jock at the same time? While that may sound like a contradiction in terms, it is not as much as you might think. I know there are others like me out there.

Make no mistake about it, I started out as a full-blown nerd. I loved sitting around and watching Star Trek or the Twilight Zone, anything science fiction. I liked playing board games and other indoor activities. I was fascinated by science. I saw myself when I grew up, as either being an astronaut (my first choice) or an astronomer, chemist, or some other cool (in my mind)  scientist. Some of my classmates dreamed of becoming a professional baseball, basketball, or football player. I knew I was fast, based on activities on the playground, but in my fantasies of adulthood, “athlete” never even made my radar. Another adult activity that I never thought about was “writer”, but perhaps more about that in some other blog. Cartography (my current job) was a profession I had never even heard of.

Then one day during the summer before Third Grade, a friend of mine introduced me to a new friend. This initial meeting did not portend well for future friendship. I was inside watching The Twilight Zone on TV (what else?) The doorbell rang and I was introduced to Rich. I was kind of a neat freak, and here was this kid with a dirty face wearing a torn shirt with jam stains on it (I think they were jam stains. Could have been blood, but I wasn’t going to scrutinize them enough to find out). I was not impressed. And I could tell from his distracted manner that he was not impressed with me.

But as strange as it may be, we did grow to be best friends. That meant my sports education had to be started. I could name maybe one or two baseball players, and no one from any other sport. Rich could probably give you the entire roster of his favorite baseball and basketball teams and tell you the quarterback of every NFL team. But the salient point is that if you were friends with Rich, you had to play sports, not just watch from the sidelines, or TV. He taught me the finer points of football, basketball, and baseball. Actually participating in sports meant I had to learn a certain amount of physical discipline (a rather new concept for me). But I did it. I soldiered through and got my education in sports.

I was never a big fan of playing baseball (to tell the truth, I was afraid of the ball), so when we got to Junior high, where there were organized teams, I went out for track. Oh, I had gone out for other sports. Football, I didn’t care for. I was on the basketball team and had the good fortune that ours was one of the worst teams in the city. That meant I actually got to play. I enjoyed basketball, but with track I discovered my niche. It turned out; I really was fast. For my age group I was the fastest sprinter in the school and one of the fastest in the city.

I eventually moved away from Rich and went to a large high school where I set records and placed well in the state meet, and eventually in college I went to the national meet. I got nice accolades and such, and yet, I really wasn’t much different as a person. I was shy, introspective, and still liked science fiction. The girls did not flock over me. In fact, I think I went on only one date in my entire high school career, and that didn’t go well. My studies shifted away from astronomy to Biology, which is what I eventually got my college degree in. It didn’t matter how fast I was, intellectually I was still a nerd (I still kind of am).

We tend to categorize people (especially in school). We put them into groups: the nerds, the jocks, the rich kids, the poor kids, the drama freaks, the stoners, the smart kids. Once you get a label, society defines you by it. Assumptions are imposed upon you. But we are all more complex than what can be described by a label. You start to realize that this applies to bigger issues, because society also makes assumptions made because of your sex, your race, your religion, or your sexual orientation. But the truth is; there is no label that can ever truly describe who a person is.

(My science fiction novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).

Link to Star liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Child of the . . .

  What was it like to grow up as a child in the 90s? How about the 1940’s? Thinking about a child growing up in each different decade, conjures up images in my mind. But that is all they are: images. I was a child in the 1960’s. I can tell you what it felt like to be growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, but what it felt like to me is not what the history books remember. History will tell you the 60’s was about the Viet Nam War, civil rights, and the space race. The 70’s was Disco and Watergate. I remember being aware of all of those things, but to me this era was about finding time to play with my friends, something I probably share with a child of any decade. It was about navigating the social intricacies of school.   It was about the Beatles, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, The Animals, Jefferson Airplane. It was Bullwinkle, the Wonderful World of Color, and Ed Sullivan. There are things that a kid pays attention to that the grown-ups don’t. Then there are things the adults ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Telephonicus domesticus

Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone from 1877 bears about as much similarity to the modern smart phone as an abacus bears to a PC or Mac. There are just about as many leaps in technology in both cases. It’s funny how a major jump in technology happens (like the actual invention of the phone). Then there are some refinements over a few years or decades until it gets to a useful stable form. Then it stays virtually the same for many years with only minor innovations. The telephone was virtually unchanged from sometime before I was born until I was about forty. Push-buttons were replacing the rotary dial, but that was about it. (Isn’t it interesting though that when we call someone, we still call it “dialing?” I have never seen a dial on a cell phone.) Cell phones were introduced and (once they became cheap enough) they changed the way we phone each other. New advancements followed soon after, texting and then smart phones. Personal computers were also becoming commonplace and wer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bureaucrats

  I am one of those nameless, faceless bureaucrats. Yes, that is my job. Though I actually have a name; I even am rumored to have a face. Bureau is the French word for desk, so you could say bureaucrats are “desk people.” In short, I work for the government. I sometimes have to deliver unpleasant news to a taxpayer. I sometimes have to tell them that the deed they recorded won’t work and they will have to record another one with corrections. Or we can’t process their deed until they pay their taxes. I can understand why some of these things upset people. The thing is, we don’t decide these things. It is not the bureaucrats that make the laws. The legislature writes the laws. We are required to follow the law.   If you are going to get mad at someone, get mad at the legislature. Or maybe get mad at the voters who voted the legislature in (That’s you, by the way). The same thing happens when the voters vote in a new district, or vote for a bond, or a new operating levy for an ...
Post a Comment
Read more