Sunday, August 19, 2012

Be a Nerd for Something

I have learned a lot of things from my husband in the eight years that I have known him. Since being married, I feel like that learning process has been on hyper-drive. Today we have been married for a full year, and I would like to talk about one of my favorite lessons he has ever taught me.

"Oh, hey guys! We're already learning so much!"

Be a Nerd for Something: A Lesson from My Husband, Daniel
by: His Wife, Christy

The audience of Drum Corp International's live-streamed World Championship is different than most human beings would ever imagine. To be fair, most human beings have probably never heard of Drum Corp International. Whenever Daniel announced that he had bought tickets to this event at the Union Square 14 Regal Cinema, I was certain it would be the two of us alone with the projectionist. I obliged, laughing at his precious decision to purchase advance-tickets to something so obscure.

Color me surprised when I entered a theater as full as any summer blockbuster midnight premiere. The 4.5 hours I spent in that theater (You are not reading that wrong. FOUR. AND. A. HALF.) were some of the strangest of my life as I immersed myself into this off-the-wall subculture of adult band nerds.

Here is my tweet about this selfless accomplishment.

Now, if you don't know what Drum Corp International is, you are the 99%. If you were in marching band at some point in your life, you might be familiar, but the rest of us are typically clueless about the passionate world of DCI. Basically it's a marching band competition and it's kind of a big deal, I guess.

Bands (or corps) from all over the nation comprised of high-schoolers and college students perform shows based on a theme. These groups practice and perform all summer long until they achieve total precision and are ready to compete in the DCI finals. There are a few bands that have a huge following (for a marching band, I guess) and there are some other bands that only the students' moms know about. 

Now, if you are reading this and you don't know what marching band is, you might be from Cuba or something (For some reason, I'm just assuming that they don't have marching band in Cuba. That might not be entirely fair). Here is a highlight reel from the DCI website that might give you some kind of indication to as to the showmanship expected from these guys:




The whole experience for me was at first just a little odd. I had to come to terms with the fact that these people were all here in a crowded movie theater to watch marching band shows and not Batman or something. I used to be a choir girl myself, but I'm not sure I would have dedicated this kind of time and money to see groups perform a selection of madrigals for almost five hours, even if they were dressed like this:

A member of the Blue Knights color guard

It all became especially real whenever it was time for a group called The Madison Scouts to perform. All of a sudden this audience was transformed from a collection of well-educated band directors and enthusiasts into a squealing, convulsing, elated group of pre-teens that you might find at a One Direction concert. It was pandemonium.

I heard the woman in front of us announce that these guys were "SO sexy, ohmygod", and I didn't have the heart to remind her that some of them might be sixteen-years-old. I looked over to Daniel to laugh about this absolute Scout Mania when I noticed a glimmer of utter joy in his eyes. He was into this. While he might not join the woman in the row in front of us in announcing their sex appeal, Daniel was legitimately excited to be at Regal Cinemas amongst people who were absolutely nerding out over these guys with feathers on their heads.

At first, I felt a little embarrassed. Up until this point, I had been making fun of all of these people in my mind, but marching band is actually super impressive. Nick Cannon wasn't just in the movie "Drumline" for the paycheck. What these guys do is nothing short of superhuman, and my husband, my best friend, actually used to be a part of this.

Now, tell me he doesn't look awesome in this picture!

Despite the fact that it requires so much skill, marching band has kind of always been a classically nerdy thing to do. The people in marching band, however, swear by it. They are a tight-knit community who get jazzed about metronomes and drum majors and all of those things that the rest of us just can't possibly understand. To be called a "band nerd" might as well be the same as "rock star".

Daniel has never been ashamed to say that he is a nerd. I think it is his favorite description for himself. He is a constant seeker of information. Reading is like breathing for him in a way that puts even the most avid readers to shame. He is twenty-three-years-old and still reads books with dragons on the covers and he uses every opportunity to teach me something new about dinosaurs. He starts almost every sentence with "I was listening to a podcast the other day and.." or "There was this article the other day that talked about..." He watches television shows no one has ever heard of. He comes out on top in fantasy sports without watching a single game. He has played Magic the Gathering numerous times in his adult life. 

A parody meme made by one of Daniel's roommates.

He's a nerd by almost anyone's standards. 

But Daniel is the best kind of nerd. He is the kind of nerd that delights in several nerd communities. Like his time in marching band, Daniel has always surrounded himself with people of unabashed interests and passions. When you meet Daniel, he wants you to talk about what you're excited about. He wants to laugh with you about your specialized knowledge and encourage you in expressing those things that make you most excited. To Daniel, whatever it is that makes you absolutely nerd-out is the coolest thing in the world. 

Daniel expressively encouraging a friend to pursue their passions

Before I met Daniel, cool was my highest pursuit. To be fair, I was a teenager and that was probably what we all cared about most, but not Daniel. That has never been his aim. As someone riddled with self-consciousness, Daniel is the most refreshing thing that could have ever happened to me. On a daily basis, Daniel encourages me to do the things I love despite what anyone might think as a result. Let's be honest: this entire blog would not be happening without the incessant requests of my husband. 

It dawned on me in that movie theater, as plume-headed men and women trumpeted militantly before my eyes, that Daniel was inviting me into this nerd-dom and that this was an incredibly intimate and trusting gesture. Not only that, but by marrying me, Daniel has invited me to the rest of his passionately nerdy days, and since he chose me, he must consider me a nerd as well (and if you are friends with Dan, trust me, he thinks you are a nerd too). 

Look! We're both nerds.

As Daniel has imparted this knowledge in our marriage, I hope to impart it to anyone who is reading this: Be a nerd for something. Dust off that accordion, dance even if you're terrible, make a fool of yourself in an incredibly public way. Love that thing that you love in a way that makes you a little bit eccentric.

To conclude, I would like to end with Daniel's hands-down favorite story from the Bible. It comes from 2 Samuel chapter 6, and it's going to be my Cliffs Notes version, so here goes: 

So David (King of Israel/protagonist in this story) is super stoked about something great that God has done. He gets so excited, in fact, that he dances around in a linen ephod (basically his underwear) as a way of praising the Lord. This girl named Michal is watching this scene unfold, and she is not impressed. When David comes by her later, she says something super snarky:

"How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!" 

This girl is not happy. But David goes on to explain that he was doing this as a celebration for God and he says something incredible:

"I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes" 


David does not care that he looks flat-crazy. He is nerding out for what he believes in. Let us all be as undignified as David is for the Lord and as humiliated in our own eyes as Daniel is for Jurassic Park (and the Lord). 


Nerds

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

IKEA and Other Letdowns

You know this scene from 500 Days of Summer?



How fun does this look? Don't you wish you were as quirky and carefree as these two?

Well, the other day when Daniel and I were planning a trip to IKEA, this is pretty much exactly how I imagined everything going. We would run around the store without any consideration for other customers (in fact, in our minds we would pity their lack of freedom), we would pretend that all of the model rooms were our home, and Daniel would say something clever like, "Darling, I don't know how to tell you this, but there is a Chinese family in our bathroom," and we would laugh and laugh. It all seemed so doable.

Believe it or not, that is not how our trip went. How could it? I'm not Zooey Deschanel, and we were not there for a date. We were there to make serious decisions about serious pieces of furniture for our very serious apartment. Now, I've had different experiences at IKEA, and I'll admit that it can be fun as long as you are just browsing. However, when you're there to get business done, it is like walking through each circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. Each section is a new decision which brings along a new level of stress, and at certain points, you begin to wonder if there is even a way out.

A Map of Dante's Hell

Map of IKEA. It's a different layout, but you can't deny the similarities. 

What broke me was when we were deciding on curtains. We've just moved into a new apartment, and the view from our windows is of barbed wire and about fifty other apartments. I want to get our windows covered, like, yesterday. When we got to the window section, we had already made about 1,000 different trivial decisions and there were crying babies and messy beds everywhere and all I could think about was that $1 cinnamon roll at the end of the store that seemed so far away. By the time Daniel told me that he hadn't measured the windows (to be fair, neither had I. I would never have thought of that), I had completely forgotten how to think. All of the bright patterns and umlauts had finally broken my brain, and I let out a strange grunting noise and let my body collapse onto a FÖRHÖJA.

What made this trip even more difficult was that I had this romanticized idea of what a visit to IKEA  should look like. Obviously, I didn't think it would be exactly like 500 Days of Summer, but I at least had a strong misconception that it would be some romantic experience. While the whole notion that life is not like the movies is absolutely a cliche at this point, I am the type of person who constantly forgets that. I do this a lot, more often than you would think, and I am always disappointed.

Here is a short list of experiences from movies that set me up for disappointment:

1. Painting our apartment (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)


Expectation: We're going to paint love notes on the walls and splatter paint onto each other's faces without making a mess and we will laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: We paint in a room with no air-conditioning and I sweat like a faucet.

2. Riding the subway (Rent)


Expectation: I am going to love this! There are going to be tons of interesting people, and there are those rails that you can hold onto, and we're all going to dance and sing and laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: There are rats everywhere and it can take you an hour to travel seven miles and sometimes it is so crowded that you have to basically lay your entire body on total strangers.

3. Watching Fireworks (The Sandlot)


Expectation: The entire sky above me will be lit up and I will have a hotdog in one hand and a vintage Coca Cola in the other and, in our amazement, we will all laugh and laugh and laugh!
Reality: There are some dim lights in the distance that are vaguely colorful and I have to pee.

4. New York Weather (You've Got Mail)*


Expectation: It will be crisp and cool year round and I will look adorable in my coat-and-snuggly-scarf combo and I will own a charming children's bookstore and all of my co-workers and I will laugh and laugh and LAUGH!!!!
Reality: Sometimes it is so hot and muggy that my face feels like soup. Also, I don't own a bookstore.

*To be fair, this movie is mostly set in the fall and winter. For some reason, I just assumed that New York weather was always perfect.



People are pretty negative towards having too many expectations, and I think they are generally right. Someone wise has probably said this to you at one point in your life:

Expectations are premeditated resentments (or disappointments).

If no one has said that to you, just pretend I made it up. But here is another quote that I think I really did make up:

Disappointments are like baby carrots; They will almost never kill you.


I made this image so you could pin it on Pinterest. The sunset and butterfly indicate its high level of inspiration.

Yep. That's my quote. You can tell because it basically makes no sense, but let's pretend for a second that it does.

I would argue that if expectations lead to disappointments, maybe that isn't the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Just like baby carrots, disappointments are gross. You feel kind of cheated out of something great, and you've got a terrible taste in your mouth. Baby carrots, however, will almost never kill you (unless you have an allergy which I assume is rare, or God forbid, you choke on one) and the same is true of our disappointments. At the end of the day, baby carrots aren't the end of the world, and some people will actually tell you that they are good for you.

I look back on our IKEA experience and I kind of love it. It is true, I probably should not have expected it to be a romantic comedy, but that's part of why it's so great. I remember that day and I think about how distraught I felt and how awesome Daniel was at taking care of me. At the time, we didn't laugh and laugh and laugh, but when we think about IKEA now, we pretty much can't stop laughing.

The same is true of all of my other "disappointments". No, the weather in New York isn't the perfect chill I had always dreamed of, and yes, sometimes someone sits next to you on the subway and decides to clip their fingernails, but it's almost better this way. From the ashes of expectations comes a sense of humor about things. Sometimes I need my idealistic world to be rocked to find a realistic sense of appreciation.

Some people can skip these steps altogether and just enjoy things immediately. These people are better than me, but I kind of like my system.

Also, sometimes your expectations actually come to fruition, and that can be pretty great too.

Despite the sweat, we actually did end up painting love notes on our apartments walls



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