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