A full deck of Geek Cards

The World According to Carp
    By Benjamin Carp

Only at Yale would they have such a thing as the Geek Card. The Geek Card (aptly enough, taken from a Magic: The Gathering deck) is a proud trophy, a laughably irrelevant distinction, or a scornful stigma, depending on your perspective. Four Trumbull seniors deal and get dealt the Geek Card among themselves, displaying it prominently on the bedroom door of whomever has performed the most recent act of unconscionable geekiness: attending a meeting of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society; pulling an all-nighter at the Dunham Lab Zoo; imbibing prune juice; or shaving backwards while under the influence of alcohol. At one time the card was wielded, within this suite, with a swift, arbitrary, and merciless hand.

Sadly, however, the rapid transference of the Geek Card is on a temporary hiatus. One of the suitemates, on the anniversary of his last amorous encounter (or, as he put it, in recognition of his "year-long play fast"), appropriated the card indefinitely. He will relinquish it upon terminating his "fast," which, I can tell you from first-hand knowledge of his habits, is not likely to occur in the near future.

When the Geek Card resumes its good-naturedly derisive circulation (interested women can contact the yenta division of Undergraduate Dating Services), I would like to propose widening its scope to include the entire campus. Because one thing's for sure--Yale may not have a useful course critique, a nearby video rental store, working fireplaces, or flexible dining options, but we've got plenty of geeks.

"Geek" appears in Webster's New World Dictionary between "GED" and "gefilte fish," and is defined as "1. a performer of grotesque or depraved acts in a carnival, etc., such as biting off the head of a live chicken; 2. any person considered to be different from others in a negative or bizarre way, as a teenager seen as being awkward, tall and gangling, stupid, or antisocial."

As teenagers, the vast majority of future Yalies were, indeed, the social outcasts: the awkward (though mostly not tall), gangling, antisocial nerds. The ones who buried their noses in books, who excelled rigorously in their chosen activities, who had a college education in sight, and who accepted a coveted spot in the Ivy League (almost as if the Office of Admissions had mailed out the Geek Cards). Bring these overachieving pariahs together in one location, and you've got a frightful mix. The end result: our parties, for the most part, from a simple Thursday night keg stand to Spring Fling itself, are objectively lame.

We have created a campus environment where studying is a valid excuse for not drinking. Where abstention from sex is accepted with meek resignation. Where a professor holds an extra review session, and the "Yale Daily Birdcage Liner" inflates the non-issue to Gary Hart proportions (because, to geeks, what could be more criminal than not inviting them to a study session?).

Thus, by virtue of weaseling your way in here, you are a geek! You are familiar with the Iliad, all-nighters, Star Wars, e-mail forwards, The X-Files, datelessness, Spam, and Group IV. Men and women each share the studiousness, slovenliness, sci-fi fascination, and general intellectual weirdness. Yalies are even geeky about their debauchery--hence the driven, obsessive intensity with which they organize everything from drinking to necking.

Whether you play Doom or varsity football, whether you're a member of the FDA (Freestyle Dueling Association) or DKE, whether you drink prune juice or expensive wine, I can guarantee that at some point, you will deserve the Geek Card. But, you may ask, how can every individual at Yale be "different in a negative or bizarre way?" How would one separate the geek wheat from the geek chaff? By observing the people at frat parties? Bars? Computer clusters? Basketball games? Bedrooms? Chem Lab? Don't make me laugh--those folks are all the same, and it's futile, irrelevant, even hypocritical, to attempt to find the "übergeeks" among us.

Geeks of Yale, you can play any hand you want, but you can trump it with the Geek Card. And if you can't stand the most grotesque aspects of this geeky carnival sideshow, then don't watch the act. But you can't deny you're part of the circus.

This column was written on a Saturday night, because, let's face it--I'm a geek. Now shut up and hand me that live chicken.

Recent Herald Columns by this Columnist:
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• When booty calls, and other 'issues', 1/16/98
• UDS can help pull your strings, 12/5/97
• Yale's dumb rules laid bare, 11/14/97

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