The Living Rockumentary

Here's a question. Not that this would apply to Max or Brian necessarily but most likely to at least, me, Ken and Hen. Have we successfully reclaimed the word "nerd" to be a good thing? I mean, post-high school. Or were there any of us who truly took some pride in being called a nerd? I mean, I took pride in the fact that I read and understood James Joyce in high school, loved The Beatles when all my 5th grade schoolmates liked metal and that I disdained trendy things like The WWF, breakdancing, heavy metal etc. because those things honestly didn't interest me even when it meant the result was my alienation from any of the cool cliques. And with the braces and acne, bad posture, unhip clothes and no girlfriend until senior year, I knew I was a nerd but wouldn't actually proudly call myself one at the time. But these days, I have a feeling that there are plenty of high-schoolers who don't mind being called nerds or geeks and relish their outsider status. Does that make sense? In the 80s, I didn't try to be cool but I wasn't some other kind of cool because of it. I was just uncool. Nowadays, there's cool and so uncool that you are cool. And "cool" is probably not the cool word to use. Oh dear, she can't even talk yet and I can just feel Hannah seething with embarrassment that I'm her dad. Poor kid.