Defining the Line Between Fun and Bias

Man, am I just a total killjoy?

I struggled today with a decision whether or not to dress up for Spirit Week. Monday was Crazy Sock Day; Tuesday, crazy shoes. Yesterday was Crazy Tie Day. All of those I could absolutely get behind. But I wasn’t so excited by the plan for Thursday—“Nerd Day.”

I imagined kids with their pants hiked up, wearing fake glasses and imitating the speech patterns of some of their classmates with special needs.

I wondered if I was overreacting. Hypersensitive. Obnoxiously PC. 

But then I thought about Andrew.

“I don’t want to dress up tomorrow. I don’t want to go back to being a nerd again,” he told Ms. Denise. Andrew has autism.  Ms. Denise told him it was all in fun, but he certainly didn’t have to dress up if he didn’t want to.

I went back and forth. The intention is all in fun, but the effects might not be fun—especially for kids who regularly wear their pants a little high, wear glasses or talk differently than most of their peers.

Even as I thought through potential outfits I could make, I was thrown back to my own elementary and junior-high experiences, when deciding what to wear caused moments of real stress, even anguish. There was genuine fear that if your pants were too short, or too tight, too baggy, too old, too anything, you’d be called out by one of the popular kids and made to feel awful the rest of the day. 

That is real to me. The heart flutters come back, even at 26, now quite at ease in my life and my wardrobe. 

From the time I was a seventh-grader, I had to purchase my own clothes. I never had any brand-name items. Most of my clothes were from thrift shops. I wore sweatshirts from playing on the school volleyball and soccer teams nearly every day, because those were sure to be “safe.” They would draw no questions or comments. 

Combine the fact that I had the wrong clothes with my propensity for doing my work and earning good grades, and voila: I was an honest-to-goodness nerd. 

The stereotype of “nerddom” is one that will forever frustrate the academic teacher in me. It is terrible that kids are ostracized if they enjoy reading, try hard at math or generally do well in school. To me it’s one of the most counterproductive stereotypes out there. 

So maybe I am a party-pooper. But I decided to dress normally today. If kids ask me, I will calmly explain that I still am a nerd. I still don’t wear expensive clothes, and I still love to learn. And if that’s what a nerd is, I’m cool with it. 

Craven is a middle school English teacher in Louisiana.