As a teenage supernurd, I was tasked with acting and being as idiotic as possible, all the while not realizing that I was an annoying outcast who no one really liked. To that end, my ultra-nurdy friends and I formed a club. Of course we did. It’s what nurds do. Jocks score with hot cheerleaders and twirlers, nurds celebrate celibacy cerebrally.

The names of the club were acronyms, the first standing for Michael D. Zeiler, Chris W. Slaybaugh, Richard R. Barron Bothering Service. The second, the short name, was Federal League of Associated Botherers (also known as the FLAB.)

Our club was mostly modeled, oddly, after the hit 1960s spy spoof Get Smart, even to the point of all of us having code numbers. Mine was 127 for anyone keeping score. A smaller percentage of our group’s psyche was culled from Monte Python’s Flying Circus.

My secret agent agenda in forming the FLAB was to get the attention, any attention, of certain beautiful but obviously unattainable girls at my school. It turned out to be much more effective at garnering attention from their thick-necked boyfriends, who spared no expense in threatening to kick our asses. We were such weeners that no ass kicking was ever attempted, since we  would practically say “yes sir” to them.

Now that I am as cool as a straight-edge razor slicing a big green cucumber, seeing geeks today fills me with the futile urge to shake them by the collars and yell, “Snap out of it, you idiot! She doesn’t care about your high score on Donkey Kong!”