Get Your Geek On

If you have ever wondered what it's like to go to a two-day librarian conference, I can tell you from first-hand experience: it's total geekdom.

Now, usually I'm all about nerdiness and geeks in general. I like techies. I enjoy a nice pair of glasses. But I feel the need to set some guidelines, to clarify (and maybe justify) exactly what my love of nerds entails.

Some Geeky Things I Do NOT Love:

1. Those chains that hold your glasses around your neck. If you don't need your glasses all the time and simply cannot keep track of them, just take them off and put them in a case, fools.
2. Any floor-length dress that has a lace collar/flower print combo.
3. Dandruff.
4. Frizzy hair. I'm not talking about the "it's a little rainy out and my hair got frizzy" frizz. I'm talking about the person's hair in front of me during a lecture going down my throat when I breathe in because it's so large and has apparently never been brushed kind of frizz.
5. Jumpers and/or overalls. This should speak for itself.
6. People who feel it unnecessary to wear deoderant. Simple hygiene goes a long way.
7. Orthopedic shoes- these shouldn't even count as geeky, just old, but I saw so many at the conference I felt they were worth including.

These are a few major offenders. The types of things that give us nerds a bad name. It's not the pocket protectors- those are just protection, man. It's not our love of sitting in badly lit library stacks with ancient monographs- that's just cool. No, it's the people that insist on season-themed sweaters that drag us down.

I will admit whole-heartedly that I am a big nerd. But I saw a lot of these offenses going on at the conference and I am going to say right here and now that we librarians needs to band together to show everyone the cool side of geekdom. Get your geek on! (But in a cool way, please.)