> If the JoCo Cruise is a church, I am apostate. That’s why I couldn’t stop worrying and love the Sea Monkeys. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a nerd anymore. It was that I did. Or rather, that I already, inescapably, was. That boat and those people? They were my hometown.
Poignant article, some echoes in my own life. My nerd cred includes liking comics, Star Trek, computer programming, obsessing about science fiction minutiae, explaining real life using computer/SF/fantasy tropes etc. But somehow never quite belonging with all the cosplaying, filksilking, us against the muggles depth of nerddom. And never quite belonging with mainstream society either -- why do people NOT want an explanation how MCU Bruce Banner can control his Hulk persona, for example?
It's strange this feeling of not belonging. The author identifies this with a former life ("my hometown"), presumably because he's partly outgrown it. While I have outgrown some parts of my nerddom, I've always felt this "not belonging" though.