The Queen of the Nerds and the Naked Noo Noo

There must be something in the air. The birds are building their nests, the rabbits are holing up under the deck to do unspeakable and prolific things, the bees are buzzing and pollinating flowers like there's no tomorrow, and the kids are...well...the kids are acting kinda funny. Today was the kind of day that convinces me of the wisdom of locking my beloved Dictator and Anarchist away from the rest of the world until they are at least thirty...or maybe forty.

The mythical "sassy" Nerd Queen of
fantasy card game legend. 

The Bureaucrat's plot to turn the Dictator into a nerd, thereby rendering her undateable to the future teenage male population is failing utterly. We can't say we weren't warned. After discussing the Dictator's love of nerdy fantasy card games and her desire to play in nerdy fantasy card game tournaments with certain nerdy fantasy card game playing friends (who may or may not be nerdy themselves), we were reminded that the Dictator would be a rare and exotic find in nerdy fantasy card game world. She would be a lone girl among hoards of socially awkward boys. She would share both their intelligence and their passion for nerdy fantasy card games. And if she washed and groomed herself--which, to his credit, the Bureaucrat is not encouraging--she would be the epitome of nerdy fantasy card game playing boy desires: The Queen of the Nerds.

To be fair, I knew this was a risk. I never really approved of nerding-up the Dictator in the first place. I honestly thought I would have time to undo all of dragon-loving, battle-waging, hair-not-washing work done by the Bureaucrat before it was too late. But alas, the events of this week have proved me wrong.

Yesterday, the Dictator leaped off of the school bus giddy and skipping, with an odd gleam in her eye. "Guess what?" she exclaimed. "I met someone on the bus who likes to play nerdy fantasy card games too! And he's a boy...an older boy." And then she tossed her hair like she does when she's trying to be "glamorous" and "sassy." God help us all. Please. "I really like him. I told him all about my Fairy Harbinger card, Deadly Recluse, and Sentinal Spider. And he showed me his cards. Now he wants to see mine." I'll show you mine, if you show me yours. Terrifying.

But maybe it would come to nothing. Fantasy card game enthusiast meets fantasy card game enthusiast. Fantasy card game enthusiast shares deck with other fantasy card game enthusiast. Fantasy card game enthusiast promptly forgets all about other fantasy card game enthusiast and runs off to play "zombies and attack kittens" with her (mostly female) friends. It could happen.

But it didn't.

This afternoon--while getting swarmed by ominously feverish bees--I watched my little Dictator descend the bus steps, her "sassy" and "glamorous" hair flowing behind her as she sashayed across the street. Behind her, a dark and handsome (or, ya know, curly haired and adorable) third grade boy eyed her longingly as she made her way across the wildflower-laden lawn. "Dictator!" he called, passionately, "We should really try to spend more time together." Eek. And I got to hear about him all the way home. Actually, I got to hear all about his nerdy fantasy card game deck all the way home. But, as the Bureaucrat and I have very recently (due to the current state of affairs) started to use "deck" as a joking euphemism, her innocent prattling did not seem as innocent as it should have.

But that's okay. There's still time. She's not a teenager yet. I get that. Little Fantasy Card Game Enthusiast  Boy is probably just interested in fantasy card games, and nothing more, right? I'm sure that's why I saw him ride his bicycle by our house and gaze amorously at her window, all Romeo-like, right? He just wanted to play cards. Sure he did.

The Anarchist tries on a dress and dreams
of her future wedding to a plastic doll
"in a state where that's legal."

Well, at least I can take solace in the fact that the Anarchist doesn't seem the least bit interested in boys. In fact, she doesn't even seem to notice that they exist. Actually, she's vowed that she's either going to marry her little girlfriend Hamster Dropper (I don't know much about the girl except that she's nice and she drops her hamster a lot) in "a state where that's legal," or, if that doesn't work out, to marry her American Girl Doll Molly "in a state where that's legal." And then she can have lots of little cyborg babies. Okay. Never mind. That's creepy. Maybe I'll just marry her off to the first nice human boy who sets his sights on her. Like that nice little boy the Anarchist told me about as she got off the bus today...that nice little boy who lifted her shirt up repeatedly at lunch so that he could "see her belly button." Sure. That's why. To see her belly button. Sure it was.


And thusly, I will be locking my beloved offspring in our attic (I think we have an attic) for an unspecified duration, but at least until after prom, and more likely until they are forty. Queen of the Nerds and the Naked Noo Noo. Oh boy.

I pose with my future daughter-in-law.

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.