Go for the Geek! Yanno, when we’re in high school (and I guess, Jr. High for those who live in areas where there is such a thing), we start the separation into groups of like minded people. Somehow, in that summer between our last year of elementary school, to our first semester of high school, things change. Geeks become geeks, cool kids become cool kids, jocks are jocks, etc etc…it happens to the best of us, in the smallest of towns, to the largest cities.

Now, when I was in high school, I was pretty much a freak. I could stand on the fringes of just about any group except the coolest of the cool. Which where I went to school, was The Townies, as some who did not live right in town called them. I was also a Laker Chick. No, not a cheerleader. I lived at Mussleman’s Lake, ergo…Laker Chick. But even with the “cool” Lakers, I just barely fit in. And only because I lived there. :-p

Anyhoo…I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Probably since Anthony Michael Hall turned up with his TV show The Dead Zone. Check him out now, compared to 20 years ago when he was the geek of The Brat Pack.






And of course there’s also Patrick Dempsey. In 1988’s Can’t Buy Me Love, he played Ronald, a geek who paid the captain of the cheerleader’s to be his girlfriend for a month, so he could get “in with the in crowd”. Geek then, Dr. McDreamy now.



Or, as they said in the movie “From Geek, to Chic”. This movie won Patrick a Young Actor’s award, and his movie brother was played by then very young geek Seth Green, now red-headed hottie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Austin Powers fame.



Another of my fave 80s geeks is John Cusack. I’ve always had a thing for him, and he’s been on my list of favourite Johns since…well, since forever I think. In Sixteen Candles I think it was, he appeared first with a full set of “head gear” braces. Most people probably wouldn’t recognize him from then til now. And most people don’t know much of his movies prior to Say Anything, with the infamous scene with the boom box at the window playing In Your Eyes. I’m tellin’ ya, that’s been every woman’s dream since, to have some guy stalk her while booming late 80s love songs outside her bedroom window ;-)



So of course, all of this just really makes me wonder, why are the geeks and freaks so vilified and ostracized in school, when really all they need is a couple years to fill out and grow into their legs? Like the ugly duckling, they all seem to grow into beautiful swans. Then I guess all the cool chicks feel bad about turning their noses up at them in school! I can’t recall if I ever did snub anybody at school for being a geek, and I certainly apologize if I did. But rather I think I didn’t fit in with the cool kids, because I actually talked to the geeks and was friends with some.

Sadly, some people never grow out of that high school mentality, and even well into middle age, still have to hang out with the cool kids, never getting to know the geeks. Unless they need to borrow money, or have a bug in their computer they need fixed.

As the freak who never really fit in anywhere but a very few places, I can relate. I can converse will a lot of different crowds, but rarely do I “fit in”. Ah well…

Well, just remember kids, no matter if that somewhat cute but gangly kid with the braces is on the fringe and just doesn’t fit in, sooner or later they will, and boy, will you be sorry that you snubbed them in school when they’re accepting their Nobel Prize, they end up being your plastic surgeon, or they win an Academy Award years later!

*snarf*



I’d show you a picture of James when he was 4 years old, with a little bow tie on and everything, but it’s packed  ¶ 11:55 AM