Dorks are cool

By DARREN HANDSCHUH
A friend of mine recently said he would like to do high school again.
Personally I would rather chew tinfoil.
“Great idea, but since we can’t go back in time, why don’t you use a cheese grater on my forehead, pour rubbing alcohol on it, insult me and then laugh at my pain. That will make me feel like I am in school again.”
Sounds like a great plan to me.
Apparently, high school for my buddy was a time of merriment, parties and all around youthful mayhem.
For me, it was more like poking a sharp stick in my eye – repeatedly.
I was kind of shy in high school. Actually, I was so shy I could barely talk to myself in the mirror.
It’s kind hard to be the life of the party when you are terrified of speaking. Around my close friends I was a jokester always looking for a laugh, but in a larger social setting I would clam up.
Overall, those agonizing high school years were about as much fun as sticking my toungue in a blender.
I kind of lived on the fringe of high school society – which is a tough place for a teenager to be. Add that to the insecurity of youth, the zit farm growing on your forehead and the raging hormones that could send a teenybopper from happy to sad in 1.4 seconds and it was just a good ol’ time.
I was not part of the so-called cool crowd.
Nor was I a member of the jock fraternity, although I did play hockey for many years and I could have been a professional NHL star, except I wasn’t good enough. Had I been a much better player I would have made the Canucks for sure.
At the high school I went to, if you weren’t one of the cool kids or jocks, odds are you fell in with one of the dork clans. I always found dorkdum the most interesting group of my peers.
There are several types of dorks - dorkusalotus in Latin - each with their own attributes that set them apart from other dorks.
It is much the same in the animal kingdom. There are countless types of dogs, but in the end a dog is still a dog.
And no matter the stripe, a dork is still a dork.
There were the brainiac dorks who were so smart they were shunned by the rest of the school. They were usually dorks for no other reason than they were too smart for their own social good.
High school may have been rough for them, but those big brains of theirs served them well later on in life.
Their leader, idol and esteemed guide through the world of brainaic dorkdom is, of course, Bill Gates.
I doubt there is anyone on Earth who looked forward to their high school grad reunion more than Mr. Microsoft himself.
“Hi guys remember me. You picked on me all through high school. Well guess what? I am now so rich I just bought Paraguay.”
There were the arrogant dorks who thought they were cool, but came across as being obnoxious.
Those are possibly the most annoying dorks because they do not know they are dorks.
Some dorks moved from one dork clan to another and, on rare occasions, a dork could actually break out of their assigned role and enter the world of the cool people.
It was rare, but it did happen - kind of like an Elvis sighting.
Myself, I kind of just hung out in the background, never really getting involved and not really fitting in to any group.
I guess, under the strictest sense of the word, I could have been classified as a dork. But in my defense, it was a dorkiness bred from shyness (that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.)
I didn’t belong with the brainiac dorks or the obnoxious dorks, so I was in a kind of dork limbo.
A dork no-man’s land if you will.
My shyness faded as I grew older and in college – if I dare say so – I was considered one of the cool kids.
Who would have ever thought that would happen – the mysteries of life truly are baffling.
But still, to go back and live through high school again, no thanks.
It would be like hoping you could go through a train wreck again, or go to the dentist everyday for years on end.
No, for me high school is just a painful memory that, with the right medication, will fade into the background, never to be re-visited again.