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February 12, 2008
We should come with warning labels
Your nerd has built an annoyingly efficient relevancy engine in his head. It’s the end of the day and you and your nerd are hanging out on the couch. The TV is off. There isn’t a computer anywhere nearby and you’re giving your nerd the daily debrief. “Spent an hour at the post office trying to ship that package to your mom, and then I went down to that bistro — you know — the one next the flower shop, and it’s closed. Can you believe that?”And your nerd says, “Cool”.
Cool? What’s cool? The business closing? The package? How is any of it cool? None of it’s cool. Actually, all of it might be cool, but your nerd doesn’t believe any of what you’re saying is relevant. This is what he heard, “Spent an hour at the post office blah blah blah…”
You can be rightfully pissed off by this behavior — it’s simply rude — but seriously, I’m trying to help here. Your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.
Information that your nerd is exposed to when the irrelevance flag is waving is forgotten almost immediately. I mean it. Next time you hear “Cool”, I want you to ask, “What’d I just say?” That awkward grin on your nerd’s face is the first step in getting him to acknowledge that he’s the problem in this particular conversation. This behavior is one of the reasons that…
Your nerd might come off as not liking people. Small talk. Those first awkward five minutes when two people are forced to interact. Small talk is the bane of the nerd’s existence because small talk is a combination of aspects of the world that your nerd hates. When your nerd is staring at a stranger, all he’s thinking is, “I have no system for understanding this messy person in front of me”. This is where the shy comes from. This is why nerds hate presenting to crowds.
The skills to interact with other people are there. They just lack a well-defined system.
From Karl, who knows. Read the whole thing, it's brilliant.
Posted by ray at February 12, 2008 10:44 AM | Permalink
Categories: [funny ]
Comments
I thought the gadgets were the warning label?
Posted by: candice at February 12, 2008 12:47 PM
Mine says Uh-huh or passes affirmative grunts, which took me a long time to attribute not to snobbery but nerdery.
The realization came on understanding that I am teh family nerd / problem-solver and that family small talk irritates the living fuck out of me.
On the other hand, NADD is a disease neither of us wants to or has to cure.
Posted by: Maitri at February 12, 2008 1:00 PM
Damn, it's my husband and his dad to a T.
I guess it's genetic.
Posted by: liprap at February 12, 2008 5:07 PM
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