Nerducation Part II: Nerd Formation

The Bureaucrat's Top Secret, Surefire, Extra Diabolical Seven Point Plan to Deter Attractive, Socially-Adjusted Teenage Boys From Approaching the Teenage Dictator:

1. Teach the Dictator to play chess

This step was originally  motivated soley by the Bureaucrat's desire to play chess with someone..anyone. Several years back he had attempted to teach me and had failed utterly. Chess involves both patience and strategy, neither of which I possess in any quantity. The seven-year-old Dictator, however, picked up on the game instantly, as she is both obsessive and strategic...and probably a whole lot smarter than her dear old mother.*

The Dictator deeply enthralled in a game of chess. I'm not gonna lie. I prefer a rousing game of "Candy Land" or "Connect Four." 

*While the Dictator is quite smart and picked up on the rules of chess in practically no time, she is not quite so smart as the Bureaucrat, who was letting her win regularly, had led her to believe. The first time she played chess with someone other than a family member (a friend of ours, whom we shall dub The Adorable Robot) she was devastated by how quickly she was "defeated" and enthralled by how well he played. Needless to say, the Dictator has a crush on The Adorable Robot who, to her father's great relief, is her type: tall, quiet, kind, unassuming, and smarter than she is.

2. Introduce the Dictator to the intense and all-consuming world of Magic The Gathering

          This is certainly the step to which I most object. I hadn't even heard of Magic until the
          Bureaucrat  and his friends decided to revive the hobby they had once enjoyed in middle/high
          school. Oh boy. If you're not familiar, Magic the Gathering (or MTG, to those in the
          know...you know, the cool kids) is a strategic card game involving fairies, mermaids, elves,
          enchanted trees and pegasae (which I have decided is the obvious plural of "pegasus" because
          "pegasuses" might be the worst thing in the world to try to say. Try it. You'll probably choke on
           your own tongue and die).

Grown men play this game, in which they obsessively collect cards, create decks (which they then christen with adorable names), and "do battle" with one another in tournament rooms that smell (I am told) of horrific body odor and loneliness. Everyone I know who plays this game is obsessively consumed--neglecting girlfriends, families and personal grooming in the quest for the perfect deck, the best strategy, and something called "mana" which is really just more cards and not miraculous food-rain.**

I think you know where this is going. This step was like a freebie for the Bureaucrat. All he had to do was play a few games in the Dictator's presence. She heard the word "fairy" and saw collections of things and the kid was hooked. "Daddy, when can I get my own 60 card deck? If I attach this sorcery to my Pegasae Stampede of Imminent Doom, will I be able to do three points of damage to your Malicious Death Knell Phantom? Mommy! Mommy! Guess what?! I spent all my allowance money on new pink card sleeves! Isn't that the best news EVER?! And guess WHAT!? My Pandora's Demon Bunny has unDYING! Isn't that the greatest thing EVER!?"

You can see how popular she's going to be with the other children at school. Score one for the Bureaucrat.

 **"Mana" is always being "tapped," which really is really just turning the card sideways, although I have a sneaking suspicion that the etymology of this term has its origins in sexually-frustrated innuendo.

The Dictator taps Wench of Glory in an attempt to "deal three points of damage..." or somesuch.

3. Force Coax the Dictator into entering the school district's gifted program

This is an extremely touchy subject for the Dictator, but I am completely with the Bureaucrat on pushing this one point of his plan. Our Dictator is scary-smart and eccentric as all get out. She also likes to yammer on and on about the minute details of her varying, painfully specialized niche hobbies. If I hear one more fact about the size of the solar system, I might go loony. (Get it? Loony/lunar? It was a space joke. I'm hilarious. Laugh, dammit!). No one wants to play with her at her own school because I gather they don't understand 2/3 of what she's talking about, so why not put her in an environment full of kids equally willing to engage so passionately in such obscure stuff? At least she wouldn't be alone and might have a shot at actual friendship. For the Bureaucrat, there's the bonus that if she does in fact make real friends, chances are they'll be nerdy.***

***I have to be careful here. I have a lot of friends who were enrolled in the Talented and Gifted Program and most some of them aren't nerds. In fact, many of them are confident, socially well-adjusted, successful, lovely human beings who shower and everything. 

4. Allow Dictator to dress herself for school.

This isn't really fair of me, I suppose. The Dictator actually has a decent sense of style for a seven-year-old, but the fact of the matter is, she's still a seven-year-old and hasn't read enough Teen Vogue yet to really be up on all the fashion do's and don't's. Like, never ever tuck your skirt into your tights, for example. Or, a short tunic top and see-through pink glitter tights over Smurfette underpants does not a complete outfit make. Or, brush your hair. You know, the subtle nuances of fashion. 

5. Do not require Dictator to groom self.

We covered not requiring the Dictator to brush her hair, thereby creating monstrous rats' nests at the base of her lovely neck. Most people do not find this look attractive, so if the Dictator keeps this up, she is unlikely to attract the future teenage boys that so terrify her father. Often, she "forgets" to brush her teeth. Yellow grime is also a turn off to most folks, so the Bureaucrat is in luck here, as well. In addition to these lovely non-grooming habits, the Dictator has a tendency to allow snot to run out of her nose unchecked. Green crust on the upper lip is decidedly icky. If the Bureaucrat can continue to be sole child-groomer in the family (while I'm busy being a bad barista), he may just succeed in cultivating lifelong habits that will make the Dictator gross enough to repel the boys that currently find her quite appealing (it turns out that all seven-year-olds share the same low standards of personal hygiene).

6. Encourage Dictator to use big, incomprehensible words, like "incomprehensible"

After one of her very first elementary school play dates, the friend's mother commented that her daughter kept coming up to her and asking for definitions of all the words that the Dictator was using as they played. We're word people, so I don't know which words the Dictator uses that are considered "too big" by her peers and their parents (because they all seem perfectly normal to me), but I do know that friends' parent has avoided play dates with the Dictator ever since. Now, I just use a regular quasi-articulate-person vocabulary around my kids and they tend to pick it up by immersion, but the Bureaucrat takes it a step further and actually spends time defining the words for the children. And when they were little, he would deliberately teach them big words and encourage them to use them in sentences (in public...loudly) so they would sound extra precocious. It turns out that, while some people are impressed by this, most are intimidated by large words (more than four syllables=scary, I guess?). Hurray! More social isolation! 

7. Raise Dictator in the Morton family

The inescapable fact here is that regardless of all the Bureaucrat's plans and my attempts to counter them, the Dictator is growing up as a member of our little Morton family, and she's destined to attain at least some level of nerdification by default. How can you not when your parents negotiate a deal in which Mom will play one game of Magic the Gathering with Dad if, and only if, he is willing to watch at least two episodes of Doctor Who with her? If every other well-laid step in the Bureaucrat's grand scheme fails, the Dictator is still headed safely towards nerdiness, or at least geekiness...and yes, there's a difference. The Bureaucrat and I have had this discussion...in front of the Dictator...so I guess I'm helping solidify her destiny. 

But here's the scary thing. The Dictator may still grow up and be the center of teenage male attention. After all, she's pretty and sweet and smart. And she'll pretty much be the absolute dream girlfriend for dozens of Magic-playing, big words-knowing boys. At least some of whom will be socially functioning and well-groomed. And if they're not, they'll probably be totally cool with the rats' nests in the Dictator's hair. And she'll be too busy playing her "Oblivion Ring" on their "Insectile Aberrations" to notice the smell of horrific body odor and loneliness emanating from theirs. Queen of the nerds. Oh boy.