Poser. (Catching up: 10 January 2008)

Some are born to geekdom, some have it foisted upon them. Still others have to work at it.

BACK IN THE DAY

I should’ve been a shoo-in for geekdom. I had a mathematician for a father—a mathematician who worked at NASA, no less, a place where slide rules ruled because they actually put people in space and lobbed astronauts over to the moon and back. I also have the odd distinction of the Star Trek premier being my first memory. It all should have come so naturally, right, given both of those points of entry to the geek oeuvre? But looking back on pictures of my one appearance at any science fiction fan convention, or “con” in the vernacular, I’m the only one not in costume, which might suggest to the outsider that my heart wasn’t in it.

(Fun fact: in those days I looked like the love child of Siouxie Sioux and that chick Maya from Space: 1999 without even trying, so I arguably fit in pretty well without the costume.)

In truth, from the start, I was all heart and no gooey geek center. I had to work for geek cred. Hard. I was so sure I could pass eventually. For a while, I sought out friends who were all “hit points” this and “elven armor” that. I took math courses for fun, though I almost flunked out of calculus one quarter and had to put some serious sweat equity into recovering my geek poise. I tried to hone my chess skills enough to play in the club, but I faced a hard truth that has eroded only slightly over the years: I will never be any more than a recreational user of chess, able to snort a bishop here and there, but never, ever will I rob a convenience store to pay chess club dues.

I was a geek wannabe in a world of geeks. I was, in short, a poser. And everyone knew it.

I had to make a clean break, for a while, with my aspirations to geekability.

In college I pronounced that I would stop caring about numbers and start caring about (1) nuclear annihilation, (2) punk rock, and (3) getting laid (no matter what he tells you, Prince did not come up with the concept of “party like it’s 1999” all by himself).

The story of why I cared about nuclear apocalypse is an interesting one, but that’s not why we’re here today.

I gravitated to punk because it let me explore anger in a (mostly) culturally-appropriate way—and I was angry as hell. One of the sources of my angst was because I was such an eff’n outcast that I didn’t even fit in with geeks.

Why ‘punk’ and not mere vandalism and other criminal frippery? You should know by now: punk’s higher level of comfort for gender bending, of course. You see, as progressive as some of the geek subculture could be, glam hadn’t really gilded the geek world yet—it would be more than a decade before Star Trek narratives would incorporate hermaphrodism. Finding a home with skanky boys, bois, grrrrls, and girlyboys, gave me sweet satisfaction because another part of my soul was finally sated. My new life also gave me delusions of superiority over the geeks who I thought had jilted me.

Q: So in college, what did I do, besides shave my head and nuzzle up to as many mohawks as possible?

A: Well, I settled on academic study of girly geekdom, beginning with studying the research and inventions of Hypatia, Shi Dun, Dorotea Bucca, Maria Sybilla Merian, and Marie Curie. I examined pedagogical gender studies that uncovered the vastly different treatment of boys and girls in science and math classes. Forget “girls gone wild”—think more “girls gone invisible!” Dear readers, I must say this last did not come as a surprise.

HUG A GEEK TODAY

These days, geekiness is in, even for girls.

Unfortunately, the cornerstone of geek nature, intelligence, isn’t in vogue. Witness the ridiculous and easily disproven assertion that smart = elitist. We’re in the midst of an anti-science backlash, neck-deep in politicians who cynically exploit scientific uncertainty so that public policy continues to serve powerful, wealthy polluters.

In his book Happiness, Richard Layard reminds us that societies need goals aimed at improving lives even if sometimes their purposes and payoffs are a matter of debate. “Society cannot flourish without some sense of shared purpose,” he writes.

Well, hell, yes. Public service: not just for everyone else anymore.

In Europe, science cafés are social clubs that have become quite the phenom. (Not sure what kind of victory this is. Imagine anything involving a pub in Europe not being compulsively embraced. You can’t, can you?)

Perhaps American science cafés could help us hip up science and find laudable public enterprises to tie our fortunes to. Combine science café with intellidating and you’ve got yourself a new American classic.

My inner geeklette seems willing still to put her hand up, go to the chalkboard, and take a stab at answering the burning question of the moment. For that I must be off to the pub.

--Misc. Romance says sharpen your pencils.