Ana vs. Joe the Nerd

While Dave was the loud obnoxious in your face nerd, the second nerd in my group, Joe, was just the opposite. Joe had a very slight stuttering problem that became a very major stuttering problem whenever Ana was speaking to him or he was called on in class. Joe also, as many nerds do, had a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth, especially when speaking to Ms. Ana.

I felt a little bad for the kid and generally tried to deflect for him, or help him save a little face. Unfortunately this wasn't always possible.

Joe didn't normally say much, but on one occasion, he must have had one too many Mountain Dews or something because he was very excited and very eager to discuss things. He wasn't making the most sense, but he kept on.

"I heard in Japan they have a processor that's like 10 times faster than the fastest Pentium. I heard in Japan they have hard drives that are terabytes in size. I heard in Japan they have the most amazing gaming console and it's like way better than the XBOX."

I'm not sure if Joe had just seen an A & E special on the land of the rising sun or if he thought this would impress Ana. I could see her eyes getting bigger as the onslaught of information (Mostly incorrect) spewed from his mouth and hit her square in the face. She was too polite to do anything so finally I decided to pull out the obscure reference book and put an end to Joe's verbal suicide.

"I heard in Japan they have a candy bar with more moviefone.com in it, I said with my normal dryness."

That finally stopped him and they both turned to look at me as if I had just said the dumbest thing they'd ever heard, and were looking for an explanation. I normally don't explain my obscure references, but for some reason I felt obligated this time.

"Been to the movies lately?" I asked. "There's that commercial where the girl is eating a candy bar and says it's great, but she wishes it had more moviefone.com in it. Then she says she bets the Japanese have a candy bar like that. It's really quite stupid."

I thought by me playing the idiot I had in essence taken Joe's foot out of his mouth and ended the conversation. At this point I had hoped we could all agree that I was an ass and move on to something more productive, but Joe wasn't done quite yet.

"Oh, I've seen that commercial. That girl has a funny voice. She sounds kind of like you Ana"

I'm not really sure if she took offense to this, or just pretended to take offense, but she quickly shot back with an angered look on her face, "Are you saying I have a funny voice?!"

At this point, having been put on the spot, Joe's stuttering kicked it in to high gear and I don't think he got another complete word out before class started and we got to work.