geek n slang
1. a person who is preoccupied with or very knowledgeable about computing
2. a boring and unattractive social misfit
Yes, I was a geek in high school. Even before high school. I guess I was probably a geek already in preschool.
Now that I think back on it, my mom had bought me a little clip-on bow tie — a plaid bow tie — to wear to church and weddings and other ceremonial gatherings where a four-year-old was allowed to dress like a miniature adult, instead of like a four-year-old.
And she bought me clip-on suspenders to wear on those same special occasions.
Maybe she recognized that I was destined to be a geek.
Not a geek preoccupied or knowledgeable about computing — not at first. That eventually came about in high school, back when it was still referred to ‘data processing’.
But the boring, unattractive, social misfit part… that part was always immediately obvious, to anyone who made my acquaintance, even when I was very young.
It came as a total surprise, therefore, when Darlene actually wanted to marry me, a geek who could barely operate an email app. It seemed perfectly natural when she ran off with that jerk from Phoenix. He wasn’t a geek; just a jerk.
I was listening to NPR last week, and I heard a commentator say something like, “Geeks used to be unpopular. Now, they are running the show…”
It’s now cool to be a geek. In fact, the geeks now rule the world.
Do I really want to be part of this club?
I learned to type (after a fashion) on an electric typewriter that had been gathering dust in my parents’ basement. (Mom had been a secretary, prior to having kids. I assume she had the typewriter in storage, in case Dad got fired someday. She never actually suggested such a thing when I was within hearing range, so that’s just an assumption.)
Then, one day, a friend showed me his new Apple Macintosh computer, which was so much more stylish than the dorky IBM machine my boss was using to do his bookkeeping. The cute little computer had 128 kilobits of RAM. (My current Mac’s RAM is 125 million times as big.) You could type on it, just like on a typewriter, but it was so much easier to correct your mistakes.
I was deeply in love. (Please do not share this column with my ex-wife Darlne. She would not be happy.)
Unfortunately, the little computer cost $2,500 which was, like, my annual salary in 1981. So I continued using a typewriter until 1998, when the iMac G3 came out. That computer was just as beautiful, in its own way, as the original Macintosh 128K had been…
Maybe more beautiful?
(I will reiterate my comment about not sharing this column with a certain person.)
And it cost half the price my friend had paid for his original Macintosh. (Accounting for inflation, it cost one-quarter the price. Thank you, Federal Reserve Bank!) And it could hook up to a DSL internet phone line without the need for an exterior modem.
The internet was barely worth hooking up to, of course. No video streaming. Amazon only sold books. eBay had 30 employees, and their primary market was recycled Beanie Babies. Most website were hideous to look at, because they were designed by geeks.
Now those same geeks, or the ill-begotten children of those same geeks, rule the world. A normal person cannot even function without constant reference to this or that technology — Facebook or Instagram or Disney+ or Spotify — technology that is completely controlled by geeks.
It’s not clear whether a humor writer like myself can authentically be called a geek, just because I spend every waking hours creating content for the World Wide Web… a term that has unfortunately fallen into disuse. I say, unfortunately, because the internet is, in fact, very much like a spider’s web from which there appears to be no escape.
Even the geeks are trapped. Maybe more seriously entangled than the rest of the world?
Which goes to show, I suppose, that justice exists.