Nerd Ensemble

Nerd Ensemble
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Well That Was Funny
By Sheri Radford

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
~Oscar Wilde

My father was one of the most intelligent people I'd ever met, but his mind was so preoccupied with big issues and big problems that he often seemed oblivious about day-to-day stuff. He'd have to be reminded and cajoled into buying birthday and Christmas presents, but he would sometimes show up out of the blue with silver earrings for Mom or stained-glass keepsake boxes for my sister and me.

He was so thrifty that he never threw out anything, including clothes, and he was color-blind — a deadly combination, as far as his wardrobe was concerned. Despite our best efforts, my mom and I never managed to cure him of his fondness for pocket protectors. When he went to work each day, he always wore one in his shirt pocket, crammed full of pens and mechanical pencils. He also never noticed when his curly, mad-scientist-looking hair grew higher and higher, so my mom would have to wrestle him into a kitchen chair to cut it herself. "It looks fine," he'd protest. (Keep reading)