There are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count, and those who can't.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not all that smart. (I know...'what belief?')
The trick is all in how you talk. Take computer people for example. They revel in speech that others can't understand.

Yesterday, I went to a Computer Science Opening Social. Ya, computer geeks...Social... They are very social, with each other. My shadow, we call him Jake, was there and he is far from a computer guy. You might remember him as the exercise "major" who walks through the park. Right from the get-go he was lost. The head of the CS department, Bro. Colton is introduced. Then a teacher is introduced, but either the speaker wasn't familiar with him or couldn't think of a joke, so the teacher said, "And I'm not Brother Colton." At this the crowd went wild (for a gaggle of computer dweebs). Bro. Colton, not to be out done, spoke up. "That's not supposed get a better response?" The reply of the teacher: "Well, I think they just liked the binary option!" Well now, that was the funniest thing the pasty people had heard since they logged on to HomestarRunner.com. I look over at Jake as he stands there breathing with his mouth open. If it wasn't for the Korean BBQ five feet away he might have had flies going in and out...
Later in the meal I was making fun of a friend, Anuj, who is supposedly dating a girl in the Main Land (continental U.S.). Basically it was about how she doesn't exist. Then Bro. Fife (a true geek) makes reference to the Null Set and Anuj's girl. We all laugh...Jake offers the kind of laugh we all do when everybody else is doing it and we don't get it. Jake's not stupid, just not in the CS loop. I get it, but I also am not quite in that circle.

Thanks to observations from a trusted friend, Shem, I have deduced why I fit in, yet can also seem normal to the outside world.
There are two kinds of computer people. Computer geeks, and computer jocks.

I am a computer jock.

Computer jocks are the ones who talk about computers like how others talk about sports. "Ya, wow, so you have a new video card... my video card can act like a VCR. I can record regular TV and save it on my hard drive. I can pause TV like a DVD, get the pizza at the door, and play back like nothing happened! Beat that!."

or

"What you have your CD's on your computer? Well, I have over 15,000 songs. If I were to play all of my songs back to back, without playing them twice, they would play for 35 days! Beat that!"

Jocks also delight in overpowering others. We do things to show superiority. Like pulling others' firewalls down to their ankles when all the other computers are looking.

I was struggling with the idea of being categorized with the masses of digital dorks and internet introverts, but now I see what the draw is for me. In a crowd like that I can be king! All hail King Jared!

Ah if my P.E. coach in high school could see me now...



- - - Dedicated to a true computer jock to whom I owe most of my knowledge, Garrett Graham.
- - - (he's not dead, but it'd be touching if he was...)