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Monday, March 7, 2011

Never Judge a Nerd

Today, Richard and I went to a local sandwich shop for lunch. It's a place that we discovered about a year or so ago, and we love to stop in and try something new on their fairly extensive menu every now and then. It also happens to be located near some of our other favorite places, so it also provides a nice variety of alternatives if one place is too packed for us to grab a quick lunch.

As we were walking towards the shop today, we noticed that there was an unusually high volume of patrons. There were so many people that the line was actually coming out the front door! Weird. But, since we were in the mood, we went ahead and jumped in line with everyone else.
After putting in our order and wading through the crowd to find a table, we started looking around at the clientele. Almost all of the individuals were very conservatively dressed - long sleeve button ups with a tie and slacks, urban jeans with a hoodie, cashmere sweaters and loafers, etc....and ALL of them were well groomed. LOTS of side satchels and backpacks. This was also about the time that Richard and I started noticing the general air of nerdiness. All of these people were serious - obviously left-brainers - and friendly, but reserved.

Upon further observation (thanks to our skillful people-watching-abilities), we noticed that they all had conference-type badges on.... Yeah, they were all attending a LUNAR & PLANETARY SCIENCE CONFERENCE!! Holy crap!! I felt like a complete imbecile as soon as I realized exactly HOW nerdy and smart all of these people around us actually were!

And then it dawned on me. Just as surely as I was sitting there judging their scholarly dweebishness, they were probably sizing me up as "the-mom-who-probably-can't-help-her-highschooler-with-his-homework".

And they would be right.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Well what about the mom that can't help her second grader with a science project? I'm guessing THAT would have been the crowd to ask for advice last week when I was having THAT little meltdown. Did you see Sheldon, Leonard, Raj or Howard?

Cecelia Winesap said...

AWESOME! I would have totally loved to have seen that... and possibly struck up a conversation. Although they probably are way smarter than me and I would just feel inadequate afterwards so maybe it's best that I didn't see that. :)