Speak Easy

In my dim recollection of school, I was one of the people who sat at the back of the class and I only tried to communicate with the person directly in front of me. The one exception was Physics, but that was because Mr. Harp was awesome. He looked precisely like every man in every Herman comic strip and was easily a billion times funnier. I wanted to sit close enough to hear everything he mumbled.

Anyways, there were times that I knew the answer to the question the teacher was asking ("Anyone? Bueller?"), but I almost never spoke up. I never really understood why teachers would ask the students. Weren't we supposed to be learning from them? Surely they knew the answer. And they were getting paid to make sure that knowledge was passed on to us. Waiting for some smarty-pants to blurt something out - right or wrong - was a waste of time. And I don't recall that it achieved any kind of class unity or even competition. Did the less knowledgeable students want to become more like the brown-nosers? I doubt it. And it certainly didn't make the ones with the answers more popular.

The Tenacity of the Nerd

Years ago, for whatever reason, there was a job position for a resident nerd on ships that traveled around the world. I don't know why it existed - and I don't know if it still does - but I do know that one particular British nerd became famous as a result of it. He was a young man who was aiming to be a doctor until - like me - he discovered there wasn't much good he could do for people while he was puking or passed out on the floor. What to do? Become a clergyman, I suppose... Nah. Jump on a boat and be the resident nerd!

So one day, while strolling on a beach in Chile (the life of a resident nerd is tough), he picked up a rock. Upon nerdy close examination, he found a mysterious creature inside it. It looked a lot like a barnacle, except it was missing the main feature of a barnacle: the barnacle-y shell. Everyone knows barnacles secrete a shell. That's what makes them barnacles! Apparently what everyone knows isn't exactly true. Mr. Resident Nerd had found himself a barnacle that avoids the whole secretion thing and simply burrows into a rock.

Now, I know what you're thinking. If you're not a nerd you're thinking, "I'm surprised I've gotten this far in the story. Where did I see those chairs I really liked...?" If you're a nerd, however, you're wondering if Mr. Resident Nerd is haunted by the discrepancy for 35 years and devotes every waking hour for 8 of those years to nothing but studying every living and fossilized barnacle known to humankind in the hopes of figuring out what really defines a barnacle. Let me help both of you out. Non-nerds, you saw them at INspiration Interiors, but they were kinda pricey. Nerds: yes.