Apparently, I'm Not a Nerd!

The other day my granddaughter Emerson and I were talking, and she casually mentioned that she was a nerd.

Now, when I was growing up, being called a nerd was not exactly a compliment. A nerd was the kid with thick glasses, a pocket protector, and an unfortunate tendency to know the answer before the teacher finished asking the question. More importantly, a nerd was usually somewhere near the bottom of the social ladder. If Hollywood taught us anything, it was that nerds spent most of their time getting stuffed into lockers by football players named Spike or having their lunch money confiscated by somebody wearing a varsity jacket.

Nobody wanted to be called a nerd.

So when Emerson proudly announced that she was a nerd, I was genuinely confused.

“Really?” I asked. “You’re a nerd?”

“Yep,” she said.

Then she explained that things have changed. At her school, all the smart kids are nerds, and being a nerd is actually something to be proud of.

“I’m an animal nerd.”

An animal nerd. A badge of honor.

Then Emerson started identifying the nerds in our family.

“Grandma’s a nerd.”

“Grandma’s a nerd?”

“Yep. She’s a computer nerd.”

That seemed fair.

Then she kept going.

“Mom’s a nerd. She knows all about airplanes.”

Another fair assessment.

“Dad’s a nerd. He knows all about auto mechanics.”

True enough.

“Ben’s a nerd. He knows all about teaching.”

One by one, she worked her way through the family, assigning each person their own category of expertise. Everyone had a specialty. Everyone had a thing they knew a lot about.

And then she stopped.

There was a pause.

One of those small but strangely significant pauses.

As she sat there thinking, I found myself wondering where I fit in this emerging taxonomy of nerds.

Surely I had a category.

Bird nerd?

Theology nerd?

Baseball nerd?

Movie nerd?

The pause lingered just long enough for me to become curious.

Finally, I asked.

“So what about me? Am I a nerd?”

Without missing a beat, Emerson said, “No, you’re not a nerd, Papa.”

Well, that stopped me in my tracks.

Not a nerd?

I know plenty of things. I can talk about birds, theology, baseball, gardening, golf, old movies, and a hundred other subjects. Surely, I qualify for some category of nerd.

But according to Emerson, I don’t.

At first, I thought she was teasing me. And she probably was.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if she was seeing something I hadn’t noticed.

When I’m with Emerson, I don’t spend much time trying to prove what I know. In fact, I usually do the opposite. I ask questions. I let her explain things to me. I act like a buffoon more often than I’d care to admit. She gets to be the animal expert. I get to be the interested audience.

And honestly, I like it that way.

The older I get, the more I appreciate the freedom of not needing to be the smartest person in the room. Truth be told, I’m probably not as sharp as I was twenty years ago.

Names take longer to remember. Facts don’t come quite as quickly. There are reminders everywhere that age has a way of sanding down some of our edges.

But maybe that’s not the whole story.

Maybe wisdom is learning that every conversation doesn’t need to be a chance to display what you know.

Maybe wisdom is becoming genuinely interested in what someone else knows.

I don’t need Emerson to know how much I know about birds. I need her to know that I’m interested in what she knows about animals.

I don’t need to be the expert.

I get to be Papa.

A friend of mine once told me, “The moment you become a grandpa, you go from the top of the totem pole to the bottom.”

He wasn’t celebrating it. If anything, he was lamenting it a little.

After all, most of us spend our lives climbing.

We become students, workers, parents, leaders, experts, decision-makers. We spend years building careers, earning respect, gathering knowledge, and becoming the people others depend on.

Then grandchildren arrive.

The family gathering isn’t about us anymore.

The trip to the zoo isn’t about us.

The conversation isn’t about us.

The story has new main characters.

My friend saw that as a loss.

The older I get, the more I wonder if he was right about what happens, but wrong about what it means.

Because from where I sit today, the bottom of the totem pole isn’t such a bad place to be.

Grandchildren don’t care much about our accomplishments.

They care whether we’ll sit on the floor.

Whether we’ll listen.

Whether we’ll laugh.

Whether we’ll ask another question.

Whether we’ll let them tell us about animals, airplanes, auto mechanics, or whatever subject currently fascinates them.

They don’t need us to be impressive.

They need us to be interested.

For most of my life, I’ve been known by what I do: pastor, leader, teacher, achiever. Those are good things. But grandchildren have a way of gently loosening our grip on those identities.

They remind us that there is more to life than expertise.

More to life than accomplishment.

More to life than being right.

So perhaps Emerson was right.

I’m not really a nerd.

Not because I don’t know things.

But because when I’m with her, knowing things isn’t the point.

Being present is.

Maybe my friend was right. When you become a grandparent, you do move from the top of the totem pole to the bottom.

The surprise is that, after spending most of your life climbing, the view from down here is pretty wonderful.

Emerson gets to be the animal nerd.

I get to be Papa.