Nerds are cool.

For all of my life, I have been a nerd. And a geek. All of those fun four-letter words (in many cases intended to be derogatory just like those other four-letter words). Add to that the facts that I'm introverted, I was once so shy it was immobilizing and anxiety-inducing, I went to church and prayed all the time, and didn't watch horror movies, I've often been on the edge of societal circles.

As you can guess, I wasn't one of the cool kids in school. Ever. Except for that one time when our Scholastic book orders came in and I had bought a book of Nintendo game secrets. For about an hour, every boy in the class wanted to talk to me. But aside from that brief, shining moment, my popularity level was on the low end.

As I was growing up, trying to figure out myself, I came to accept the fact that I wasn't cool pretty early on. Whatever cool was. It was a hard thing to pinpoint, but I knew it wasn't me, and I knew that trying to be so wasn't me either.

But I've noticed a trend among us nerdy folk: we've developed our own sense of cool. We may not fit in with those kids over there playing football, but we have our own circle of friends to belong to...and compete with. We may not be trying to make the team, but we have our own goals to reach: who can read the most books, how many sophisticated authors can we become well-versed in, how many big words can we use, how complex and eloquent can we make our sentences, how fast can we beat the latest video game, how epic can we make the storyline of our latest game of Dungeons and Dragons, how many jokes can we make in binary code (if you're one of those people who can understand anything at all in binary, I concede to your superiority right now).

All people, no matter where you fit in society, still seem to have a drive to show-up their peers. Being a person, that includes me too. I only thought I let go of all attempts to be cool. I still get an inner, self-boosting thrill when I consider the fact that I've read German poetry, untranslated. And I'm taking a class on John Milton. And I listen to indie music on a regular basis. And I know what segmentation is in relation to music and I can effectively employ it in musical analysis. And I know what the word "tintinnabulation" means, and I've actually used it. I am such a Hermione Granger, and the simple reality that I can say that gives me deep satisfaction.

So I'm still caught in the trap. It looks different on the outside, but its inner workings are the same. Just when I think I'm doing something right, I find out I'm not. Thank God for his grace, and with it, maybe one day I can realize just how unimportant all of these things are, and how he really is the only thing that can ever make me content.