Nerducation: Part I, History of a Future Nerd

When the Dictator was not yet two, she would spend hours obsessively, meticulously, methodically, and absolutely symmetrically lining up her Dora Memory Cards into perfect patterns on her bedroom floor while anxiously sucking on her "yummy" (pacifier). If interrupted, she would grunt irritably and panic if the interruption persisted. This endeavor was followed by nearly an hour of story time, in which the Bureaucrat or I would read story after story, and the toddler Dictator would become hysterical if we missed or changed a word in any of them...even the ones she had heard only once before.Yeah...she memorized them...within one reading. Then, back to the cards, just to make sure they were still perfect. This routine was what we, in the Morton house, called "Bedtime."

The Dictator reads to the Anarchist amidst a pile of books.
Nerds love piles of books.

Those were our nights. Our days were filled with carefully crafting replicas of toddler TV stars out of  Play-Doh. I would model tiny, perfect hands and feet for the Wiggles characters to shrieks of, "NO, MAMA!  The shirt collar is POINTIER than that! His belt doesn't have enough holes! It's WRONG! It's all WRONG!!!" We still have Dictator-commissioned bathtub crayon likenesses of each member of Yo Gabba Gabba indelibly etched on our shower wall (with "FOUR eyelashes, Mama! Not FIVE!!"). This insanely observant (obsessive) attention to detail, her excellent memory, and her complete lack of emotional responsiveness (to anything other than imperfection, of course) caused us to consider that the Dictator might be a savant. We asked her pediatrician about autism. He assured us that she was being perfectly normal for a toddler with a tone that implied that he thought we were most certainly making most of this up. By the time she was three (and reading like an eight year old), we conceded that she might not be autistic as much as obsessive-compulsive...or at least nerdy-smart.

The Dictator, with some of the Play-Doh characters that she
commissioned. This time it was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
You can tell from her face that she was less than pleased
with the results of my efforts. I swear that my Wiggles replicas
were better.

The Bureaucrat was delighted. If his daughter was both smart and obsessive, she would grow up into the perfect nerd. She might not even wash herself or pay attention to her appearance. Then we wouldn't have to lock her in the closet when she became a teenager because there would simply be no boys to worry about. Take it from one who knows: nerdy teenage girls aren't exactly tripping over attractive male suitors (and the nerdy boys who may actually go for the nerdy girls aren't there to be tripped on...they're stalking--and mouth-breathing--from a distance in a totally socially inept way).


The problem is that recently the Dictator has become somewhat pretty and is behaving much more...um..normally. While not wildly popular (she doesn't bother ingratiating herself to people because then she couldn't control them properly), she is at least well-liked by her classmates. She is polite and pretends not to know certain things that she does know...just to fit in.* She wears clothing from the elementary-mean-girl-approved store, Justice. She insists on looking "beautiful." While she "adores" the solar system, she loves dance class more...and she doesn't give a hoot about spelling or handwriting.

This current state of affairs has made protective daddy Bureaucrat nervous. He has begun talking about locking people in attics again. And he has launched a more immediate plan of action: the utter nerdification of our lovely Dictator. The plan involves, for the Dictator, complete and utter immersion in nerd culture. I find this completely terrifying. Let's just say that the phrases "D&D" (as in Dungeons and Dragons) and "chess club" have come up. I'll elaborate in my next post. Suffice it to say that, while I think a certain level of geekiness is fantastic, I think lines are being crossed left and right. And I'm scared. I'm so scared. Because I want grandbabies (never thought I'd say that until I was at least 50)...lots of grandbabies. And not the kind of grandbabies that are actually just cats that my daughter has forced to wear sweaters. Real grandbabies...the kind that weren't conceived at Comic-Con. More next time. Right now, I'm off to Justice to buy some pretty mean-girl clothes for my future (fingers crossed) non-nerd. Wish me luck! And may the Force be with you. (Oh my goodness, the Bureaucrat has managed to infiltrate even my mind with the nerdiness. See how completely insidious his plans are! Help!!!)


*A recent class project in which the students listed each other's positive  attributes might detract a bit from this argument. The pictures her class drew of the Dictator mostly feature pictures of her doing math with phrases such as "Math Superstar," "Smartist Studnt" and "Math Wizz" scrawled beneath them in crayon. It must also be pointed out, however, that more than one picture described the Dictator as "Fancy," "Fashunabul," and as having "Good Stile." Yikes.