Tales of a High-Functioning Nerd

Superman floats 30,000 feet above the ground, listening to the voices of humanity.  “…taking the dog for a walk…” “I don’t know, honey, I guess it was a wrong num…” “…is the greatest threat to American…” “…this week on the countdown…”   His hearing is thousands of times better than a human’s, but he still has trouble distinguishing the various voices. He wants to help these people, wants to make their lives safer--better--but there’s so many of them. When Superman first arrived at his adopted home, there were 2 billion Earthlings. Now there are more than twice that many in Asia alone. How can he hear who... “Superman, HELP!”   And the Man of Steel is off. Even within the thunderous noise of humanity’s collective voice, a simple “help” is easily understood. Jetting through the clouds, he stops every few seconds to pinpoint the troubled voice’s source. “Help! Help! Superman!” It’s a woman, and American, judging by the accent. The...

How old are we when we first begin separating into cliques? High School seems to be the apex of this particular paradigm--jock, prep, goth, punk, nerd... the whole Breakfast Club thing--but it must start sooner than that. I can remember junior high being pretty clique-oriented, too. In seventh and eighth grade recess, most of the boys would usually gather to play touch football. I tried to join them once, but after making what I presume was a terrible mistake on the field, I was told by a kid fully a foot shorter than me that "if you can't play with the big dogs, stay on the porch!" I assume he read that off of a t-shirt at some point and it really stuck with him. Anyway, after that I went back to my usual recess activity: "hanging out." I was obviously not a jock. As an adult, it's hard to look at little kids of eight or nine and think of them in terms of social status within their peer group, but I can remember that even then, there's a kind of hier...

The morning of my eleventh birthday, I woke up to my dog Scarlett softly growling. Scarlett was a sweet little Irish setter mix. Stupidest dog I ever owned, but sweet and loyal. She slept on the floor in my room, guarding me from all the dangers the suburbs have to offer: squirrels, laughing children, more squirrels. I had never heard her growl in the night, though, and yet here she was: letting loose a constant, low, warning growl. Frightened, I opened my eyes only a little. Silhouetted against the dim, early-morning light was a man. He was standing there, over my bed, watching me sleep. Terrified, I kept myself still, pretending to be asleep so as not to alert the intruder. As my sleepiness faded a little, I began to reason: why would someone break in to my room just to watch me sleep? I must be imagining things, I reasoned. It’s probably just a trick of the light! I cracked my eyes open just enough- nope! It was a man, alright! And not my father—this man was roughly the same heig...