Nerd Alert

When I met my (now) husband for the very first time, I should have known better and probably run a mile. He had longish hair that was very thick, quite curly and slightly sun-bleached. He was wearing an extremely old-fashioned pair of glasses (which, it transpires, once belonged to his grandfather, so good spot!) He had on a very sloppy woolly cardigan. And he was wearing a pair (not just one) of long dangly cat earrings. He was easily the most interesting looking person in the room.

I didn't run. I was intrigued. I can remember thinking, "Cripes! [I didn't swear much back then, and indeed thought it was cute to talk - even to myself - like an English cartoon from the early 1980s] If only my mother could see the freaks I am hanging out with now!"

Fast-forward to ten years later and you can see me get less intimidated by the male species, more out-going, start swearing, try to stop swearing, grow up a bit, still watch English cartoons from the early 1980s, and marry the freak with the long hair and earrings!

In these last eleven years, I have got to know Con really well. He is as dippy as a brush, mad as a badger, and about as nerdy as they come. I found him at a party once, sitting on the stairs discussing the merits of Linux versus Unix with a fellow geek. In my innocence and naivete, I foolishly assumed that some sex with a real girl would help him function like a normal human being.

Wrong!

Don't misunderstand me. There's not a hope in hell that I'd swap or change him for all the tea in China. In all fairness, what are the alternatives? Illiterate, ignorant, self-important, pompous, callous, mysogynistic assholes? No thanks, I'm more than happy with my man. But God in heaven, what is it with the constant nerdiness?

I don't think that they're organised or even conscious, but he has competitions with his mates to try and out-geek each other. No, seriously, they do. The current enterprise is a "facial hair growing contest". The one before that was a "who writes the most on our blog" competition [see link to Lunchtime above] and before that "who can learn to play the guitar quickest". Nobody won the last one. There's still a guitar leaning against the wall in our bedroom gathering dust. The only time there's so much as a twang out of it is when the cat knocks it over.

So where is all this going? Nowhere, really. For some reason, over the past couple of days, I've been repeatedly struck (figuratively, not literally) by the unimaginable scope of nerdiness displayed by my husband. What can break this cycle? Do I really want the cycle broken?

After all, he may be a nerd, but he's my nerd.