The Sniveling Minority
I belong to a minority. I am not Black, Jewish, Native American, Hispanic, or Gay. I am not foreign, old, nor am I a woman. I am a normal 25-32 year old white male. That’s not the group I belong to either. I’m not one of those, “white men are oppressed” David Duke/Rush Limbaugh assholes. It’s a real group. I am a Geek.
My people belong to all of the other groups. We are just as stereotyped, mistreated, and outcast as any of the other groups. But we have no political action committee. No lobbyists. Jesse Jackson will not give any impassioned speeches on our behalf. We have no color in his rainbow. We are on our own.
The hate starts early. I had a friend in the second grade named Clayton Green. He was the first geek I knew other than myself. He was always a little strange. He said COW all the time. He would do it in otherwise normal conversation.
“Hey Clayton, how are you?”
“I am fine. I’m a cow. MOOOOOOOO.”
“That’s weird man.”
And they were right. It was weird. Some people thought he was slow. Not me. I saw a kindred spirit. This is the time in school when the cliques begin to form that will determine the path of the rest of your school career. Will you be stacked in the back of a rented limousine like cordwood with six drunken couples, spiking the punch, getting drunk, and then fucking the head cheerleader in the shower of your suite at the Ramada Inn on prom night? Or will you be sitting at home alone watching scrambled porn and whacking it? These rolls are determined during this time.
People like Clayton don’t get to pick. It was over for him the day he brought a dead skunk to school. Dead Skunk = Manditory geek for life.
It was over for me right away too. First off, I looked about 3 years younger than all of my classmates. I also displayed no immediate athletic skill. That didn’t help. At one point I tried to convince my peers, that I was, in fact, an alien, sent from the far reaches of the galaxy to observe Mrs Brown’s third grade class. Sometimes things just work out like that.
