Nerds Need Love Too
The dirty little secret of why we shame high achievers and how it threatens us all.
Laura: “Where did you get the money for this?”
Steve Urkel: “From my stay-away fund. Every year, my relatives send me money in hopes that I won’t visit them.”
When I was a kid, I got called Steve Urkel at least once.
It was an easy joke to make. I was a black kid with glasses who did well in school. I didn’t have the annoying, high-pitched voice (or did I?) or the propensity to swoop into my neighbor’s house unannounced (except for our relatives, we weren’t even allowed into people’s homes).
But, I was that kid. The nerd.
I found reading at an early age and fell in love with books, a passion that was fuelled by the number of novels and encyclopedias (we owned two different sets) in our home. I discovered an appetite for understanding the world and how things worked. I got caught up in fantasy and stories, perhaps too mature for my age at the time. I tore through a donated library of Stephen King novels between the ages of 10 and 12 — yeah, it was dark.
One time, an uncle came by our home as we were just arriving from school and I was sitting in the car, lost in a novel. “Boy, you always have your head in a book,” he…
