american nerd survey

Are you secretly competing with someone you know, unbeknownst to that other person? How so?

Valerie Borey: Yes and probably more often than even I am aware of. I compete along two different, and completely ridiculous axes. The first is more task-oriented and completely random. For example, if I'm in a public restroom and walk into a stall at the same time as another woman, it is a point of honor for me to be the first one out the door again. I'm not exactly sure why I do this, but it's got something to do with making good use of time and avoiding the common traps of public restrooms (no talking over the walls, no preening, no excessive adjustment of garments, no lingering for the sake of lingering, no extracurricular restroom activities). It kills time and turns an otherwise pedestrian activity into a challenge.

The second form of competition is life-stage oriented: How well am I doing at this point in life compared to X? What makes it difficult is that X is not another person, but who I might have been had I chosen to do something else. So..How well am I doing at this point in life compared to who I might have been if I had moved to Thailand, gotten married, and started working for a bus line? Compared to who I might have been if I had won the state-wide Spelling Bee back in elementary school? It involves an awful lot of guess work and trash talk.

Mark Kalar: I firmly believe that a critical aspect of competition is all parties' awareness of each other. To use a track and field analogy, if I'm running 400m repeats and you jump in, race me for one of those repeats without telling me, and then jump out, it seems like cheating. I've applied this honor system to all aspects of my life. When I see a bike messenger and want to race him as I bike in to work, I ask him if he wants to race. When the woman at work declares herself "the biggest nerd in the office" I ask for a detailed and quantifiable breakdown of her nerdiest traits because I'm not willing to just let her walk off with the title. No more Midwestern passive-aggressiveness for me. Let's get it all out in the open. I'm better than all y'all. Prove me wrong. I dare ya.

Keith Pille: For a long time, I had an undeclared songwriting competition with Grant Weeks; eventually Mark Kalar was thrown into the mix. Then I decided that I was being silly, and shouldn't be competitive about it. Since then, I average a new song about every 18 months, so maybe I should get the competitive juices flowing again.

Don Pizarro: A friend of a friend of mine doesn't know that I know that he's started getting his fiction published in some small online sci-fi journals. I read his first published story and I know I can do better than that, so that's what I've been trying to do. I'm to the point now where I'm getting the "Nice story, didn't work for us, but we'd really like to see more" rejections. That's okay. I can still be smug over the fact that he's never gotten anything into McSweeney's.

Simon Riordan: Any other parent of a toddler that I encounter.

Katie Sheehan: My cousin, Christina. When I was fifteen and she was ten, we arm wrestled. She won. She may have forgotten the incident, but it shook me to the marrow. Since that shame-inducing day, I have traveled the world many times over, trained with Japanese martial arts masters, studied breath control with the Himalayan sages, and pumped iron with the Apple Valley Middle School track team.

Come Christmas Eve 2006, amidst the tinsel, sugar cookies, and reindeer hooves, I will officially reclaim my honor.

Jonathan Shipley: I compete with this guy who always wears striped dress shirts. That's all he wears - striped dress shirts. Well, pants and the rest, but, on top, striped dress shirts. He always wants to sit in this particular seat on the bus. I always jockey my way onto the bus and sit in his spot just for kicks.

Clint Weathers: With whom am I *not* competing would be easier to answer.

They don't know it, but I compete with every person in the darkroom with me, everyone who shoots for Fringe Festival, everyone in class with me at MCAD, my siblings, my co-workers, my friends, my extended family, complete strangers, drinking buddies, dead photographers and live photojournalists.

And every now and then, I'll go plate-for-plate with some guy at Ichiban's all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.

But he usually knows.



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