FAIR QUESTION

Definition of nerd
: an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person especially : one slavishly devoted to intellectual or academic pursuits —Merriam-Webster.

“Pops, are you a nerd?” queried Nora, Pops’ six-year old grandgirl.

I laughed and thought about it—wondering what her idea of “nerd” is. Surely there is some confirmation bias at work here. Then I realized that even having a thought like that confirmed it: if not a nerd, surely I have some tendencies. Although, as the kids say these days, I don’t identify as a nerd. Even here at 70, I still like to think I have a certain cool.

Nora herself is one cool kitten, one of those kinds of people whom you don’t want thinking you’re a nerd.

I’ve already admitted to being curious about her confirmation bias (The tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories. —Oxford Languages), so I dug in:

“What do you mean by ‘nerd’ Nora?” I asked.

Her intellectual sister Harper stepped in, “Oh, she saw a picture of Daddy (my offspring) when he was young. He had big glasses and buck teeth and she thinks he was a nerd.”

So, she’s wondering if I carry a nerd gene? Maybe she’s concerned that she too might someday manifest nerdiness?

I’m no soothsayer, but I don’t see that on her horizon.

Making my case for non-nerdness, I explained to her that I did play in the band (but at least I was a drummer). I am an introvert, but I like people; on a case-by-case basis. I do love to read and given the choice of going to Chuck-E-Cheese or a bookstore, I’ll choose the bookstore every time. (Of course, given a choice I would choose most any place over Chuck’s.) (I realize that Chuck’s might be a source of employment for the young that might tend to score high on the nerd scale. So, good for you Chuck E.) I do wear glasses. I do love the Big Bang Theory, but I haven’t been in a comic book store in years and I have no clue or curiosity about quantum chromodynamics.

By this time her inquisitive interests moved on, but I was left wandering why I didn’t want my grandgirl to think I was a nerd. Probably has something to do with my own confirmation biases which are much more ingrained in me that her’s are in her.

And after all, doesn’t it take a bit of grandfatherly nerdiness to help a grandgirl tether her iPad to another connected device so she can secure enough coins to restore life to some imaginary app dweller?

Hey, maybe that’s what she was asking all along! She wasn’t so much worried about an embarrassing potential flaw in her old Pops— just wondering if I had the tech skills to solve her 21st century quandary.