The Nerding of the N Train

So tonight Amanda, Joanna and I went to a beer garden in Queens. I don't know what the official name of beer garden was, but it was at the Bohemian House or the German Edifice or the Neo-Nazi Brewery or something. After waiting in line for far too long, we got in, and there was way more beer than garden. It was basically a bunch of picnic tables in an enclosed space, much of it under tents. And there was beer -- yes, lots of beer. But where was the greenery? Where was the statue of an angel spitting a steady stream of beer into my waiting mouth? Where were the drunk flamingos frolicking amongst lily pads? It is not a fucking garden out there, and until people realize that they will continue to wait in line for 45 minutes to get into what amounts to a large outside bar in Astoria.

But that's not what I wanted to say.

On the N train home, I saw four dudes. They were clearly Junior Moneymaker Extraordinaires -- they all had the nice shirts and pants and shoes, one of them had what looked like a diamond stud in his ear, and they were talking about "the market." They could not have been much older than us, this well-groomed group of four young Americans. I didn't pay them much mind -- standard grade tools, I figured, worrying only briefly about how and why I'd become so judgmental. But then, I noticed something.

Could it be? No.

No.

Yes.

I was quite sure.

One of them was a nerd. A bona fide, dyed in the wool, awkward as hell nerd, standing across and a bit to the right of me. The questions raced through my head like hit points out of an orc fighting a level 45 Warrior: What was this nerd doing with three kids who clearly were not nerds? Could he have possibly picked more nerdy glasses to wear? What did he have in common with the other three?

I felt bad for him. He wasn't saying anything, was so awkward he made me look like James Dean, and clearly didn't belong with the rest of his party. So I started trying to send him telepathic messages.

Join us, I thought.

Join us.

Come on, kid. You know who you are. It's your destiny and you can't escape it. Tell me with a straight face you haven't stayed up until three in the morning trying to find an Enchanted Helm of the Wizard. Look me in the eye and say the number of girls you've kissed exceeds the number of games in the Final Fantasy series you've beaten.

In no way was I criticizing the kid. The only things hiding my true identity were the fact that I was with two girls (roommates, yes, but who on the train knew that?) and the fact that nothing I was wearing tonight had a dragon on it (simply a stroke of good luck). In other words, there was no way for my fellow N-riders to know that there had been a period this past fall when I had played World of Warcraft with startling regularity; that there was a time when I was so tweaked out on Diablo 2 that whether or not I'd be able to advance my Frozen Orb spell to Level 5 before I collapsed from exhaustion at some point after dawn was a MAJOR CONCERN; that my mom once punished me by not letting me watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I completely freaked out as a result.

None of this makes me proud. But that kid should not have been hanging out with those jockish future occupants of Central Park West -- he should have stuck to his kind. When it comes to jocks vs. nerds, I am a rabid segregationist (friends: please don't take the final five words of the preceding sentence out of context and use them against me months or years from now). There's a cycle that has to play out.

1) Early in life, jocks get everything, while nerds stay at home rolling 20-sided dice
2) For a period, jocks and nerds coexist uneasily in college and in the workplace, united by common interests in alcohol, drugs, men/women, and money
3) Eventually, the nerds rise above the jocks thanks to their superior intelligence and number-crunching ability gained from calculating THACOs in their formative years
4) The nerds form exclusive, powerful social organizations that value brain over brawn and better the world with extraordinary philanthropy and awesomely addictive massively multiplayer online roleplaying games
5) Both sides marry within their type and procreate, following the complex system laid out below:

Type of couple: Jock
Gives birth to: Jock

Type of couple: Nerd
Gives birth to: Nerd

6) Jocks and nerds: the next generation meet in pre-school or kindergarden
7) Go to step 1)

This kid was out of line. He was fucking with a system that took all of my cunning and almost ten minutes to conceptualize. And he was paying for it, too; he really did look sad -- he wasn't talking to the other three kids or anything, so my assumption was that they had gone to school and/or worked together, and one of them worked with him, felt bad for him, and asked him if he wanted to spend Saturday night with them.

Bad move, Nerdy McTrainRider. If you're reading this somehow, then next time you get such an invitation, chill with me instead. You and I could slay many ogres and trolls together. LOL.