Do Nerds Laugh?

(re-run)

Yesterday, at my bi-monthly massage at the chiropractor’s, Curtis the masseur asked me lots of questions to help the 55 minute session go by.
I was chatting away as he rubbed the kinks out of my neck, shoulder and lower back, telling him this and that, until he came around to the big question, “What did you do on Mother’s Day?”

Now Curtis only knows me from twice a month, so I didn’t feel bad that he didn’t know that two of my three children are on the East Coast. When my own mother asked me if I saw my three kids on Mother’s Day, well, that’s either a senior moment or she just isn’t paying attention (at 88 years old, the first is a given, the second, she gets a pass)
Curtis and I ended up talking about PhD’s, fly guts, and nerds. Yes, my two scientist daughters are self-proclaimed nerds and proud of it. But I can only write about one of them. The other will get mad. Actually, I think I won’t write about either of them, just nerds in general.
When Curtis asked me if nerds laugh, I laughed.
“Of course they do,” I said. “Only they laugh harder because they get the joke better. Or they make the joke with their punny humor. Or they make a whole YouTube video, changing up the words to a popular song to talk about science stuff. They sing it and act it out. It’s hilarious.
I discovered that it’s not just the nerds that I know but nerds across the country making these videos to see who is the most clever. My friend’s med student son made one, and she posted Drew’s video on her Facebook page. She’s a PNM, Proud Nerd Mama.
The Brainiac nerds act. They rap. They hip hop. They videotape the whole thing and post it. They do it to stay sane in their world of study, study, study, work, work work.
The rest of us are watching sports, drinking, dancing and watching nerds on TV (The Big Bang Theory). Some of us are part-time nerds, writing books while others around us are doing the aforementioned pastimes. Unless it’s dancing, then I’m there in a heartbeat. The book can wait.
When my late mother-in-law found out that I wrote books, she said, “I hated writing in school.”
I love writing. Me, a nerd on the liberal arts side of things.
Come to think of it, computer nerds run the country, at least Silicon Valley — Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, the Google guys, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, Cheryl Sandberg., the late Steve Jobs, the retired Steve Wozniak.
So to answer the question, do nerds laugh?
Yes. They really do.
Some of them are laughing all the way to the bank.