Nerd First
Debate nature versus nurture all you want, but I will tell you an incontrovertible truth: I was born a nerd.
The bright red hair, bad eyes (and subsequent thick glasses), buck teeth, good grades, social ineptitude—I had it all as a kid. If Stranger Things had been casting in Charleston, AR, in 1986, I would have been a shoe-in for at least a bit part. How could the Mind Flayer possibly match up against a kid who rooted for cancelled recesses so he could stay in the classroom and read the encyclopedias?
Little nerd Eric, circa 1985.
At least, that’s what I tell myself. The truth is that I probably would have peed my pants the first time I saw Eleven levitate a toy spaceship. Vecna would have snapped me into a hundred little pieces before Kate Bush even got to the chorus of “Running Up that Hill.” Honestly, I would have had no shot.
Why? Because those nerds had something I didn’t: a LARP.
For those of you trying to work out the acronym, let me save you a google search. Live Action Role Playing Game. When playing a LARP, players often dress in costume and adopt a certain role, usually defined by strengths and weaknesses that require cooperation with a team. Think about the “Jumanji” reboots or “Avengers: Endgame.” Or maybe improvisational theater, or marching band, or team sports—anything that involves funny costumes and role-playing.
The storytelling in Stranger Things relies on perhaps the most famous nerd-LARP ever: Dungeons and Dragons. The four friends who begin the series understand their quest in terms of DnD. Will gets trapped in the “Upside Down,” a version of the Vale of Shadows illustrated by the underside of the game board. The monsters in the series—Demogorgon, Shadow Monster, Mind Flayer, Vecna—take their names from DnD villains. The protagonists adopt the roles of DnD heroes.
One of the geniuses of the Duffer Brothers’ writing is that they do not force the fictional universe of DnD onto Hawkins, IN. Rather, they set mysterious events in motion and then let the characters themselves name what they see according to categories they are familiar with. And this understanding informs their strategies for meeting the threats.
Seen another way, the kids are able to understand what others can’t because they have experience in an analogous setting. They know what to do in the real world because they have done it in the fictional realm of DnD.
Alas, I was never a nerd of that caliber. I couldn’t even have made it into the door of the Hellfire Club. I may have had a vivid imagination, but my childhood world consisted more of baseball trivia and farm life. I probably would have thought the demodogs were just diseased cows. My nerdery was doubtlessly insufficient for survival. I would have been easy prey.
You laugh, but there’s actually some compelling science involved here. A study published last year in Harvard Business Review suggests that the skills needed for LARPs translate very well to the business world. Those best able to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances are those who have developed what the authors call imitative, reactive, and generative improvisation skills. They know how to compete and how to collaborate. These abilities, practiced in the imaginary realm, pay dividends in the real world.
Of course, such skills don’t just happen—apologies to you Mages—by magic. To be really adept in DnD requires a tremendous investment of time and focus. The payoff is not won by luck. It is earned by time and effort. The heroes of Stranger Things find they are ready for their quest, not because they discover a handbook to tell them what to do, but because they have been improvising in the face of similar problems their whole lives.
When it comes to facing monsters from the shadow realms, I am woefully unprepared. But if I stop to think about what I’ve invested most of my life doing, I nonetheless find some useful skills. I can usually solve problems of home repair, or at least patch them up until we can get a pro in to do a more permanent fix. I am not the world’s greatest musician, but I am competent enough of multiple instruments to be useful. I invest enough in my body to be able to do physical labor when the occasion arises.
And all the time I’ve spent with language? The hours upon hours reading and writing and deleting and editing and rewriting? Well, it’s still a struggle, most days. But I’m also usually able to find the words I need in a given situation. I am able to say what I mean to say more often than not, which goes a long way toward both challenging things that are wrong in the world and offering ideas of how those could be better.
Several years ago, when my young friend Hali died suddenly, I was left to not only deal with my own grief, but to shepherd dozens of grieving college students through theirs. To my surprise, I mostly knew what to do—not because of any seminary training, but because so many friends and mentors had helped me develop abilities to see and care and respond to crises.
It’s a good feeling, discovering unexpected competencies. But it takes work—the kind nerds know how to do.
Nerds, after all, have a capacity for single-mindedness, as evidenced by the way we attach the word to the end of our interests. I can be a book nerd, a science nerd, a band nerd, a grammar nerd, a movie nerd, a baseball nerd. My wife is a death nerd. My eldest is a jazz nerd. My youngest son is a polka nerd.
My therapist assures me this is all perfectly normal, but I’ve caught her hiding her laughter.
You get the idea, though. To claim to be a nerd about something, you have to give a good chunk of yourself over to it. You have to study, to practice, to fail, to try again. You have to pay more attention than maybe is healthy. You have to be a little obsessive.
It pays off, though. Knowing a thing that well not only enables us to find connections with our larger lives. It also enables us to improvise when things go off the rails.
So nerd first. Dive into what you love. Give it more time than it deserves. You’ll be surprised how well such nerding can prepare you for what’s to come.
