Knickers to the nerds

Gaston de Rosayro

There wasn’t a mean or cynical bone in my body until I was sent out into the wide, wicked world at four or thereabouts. At kindergarten, I remember, I was possessed of a great degree of guilelessness which almost amounted to naïveté.

That was until I had my first encounters with the nerds, those almost soul-less homo-sapiens who are the scourge of all lion-hearted, right-thinking men.

Although a quintessential spoiled brat, I was never one deeply entrenched in the establishment.

But the nerds made me seem an incurable tear-away of sorts with an insufferable antagonism towards authority. A few of these spiteful wimps, I suspect, must have been born environmentalists. How else could they have objected to my piddling in the nursery barberton daisy patch, or chasing beautifully winged butterflies for my collection? They always blew the whistle on me, those crafty little snitches.

Inevitably there were the fisticuffs, not exactly a good banger or mash in the old, Wild Bill Elliot style, because the back-stabbing nerds were never exactly great fighters. But straight lefts notwithstanding, I didn’t fight too closely to the Queensbury rules either. So the insidious stool pigeons often found themselves embedded head first in the herbaceous school hedge, or picked themselves snivelling from the ditch that ran beside the mat-slide.

But primary and secondary school was quite a different kettle of fish. They actually encourage and reward treacherous sycophants to sell their classmates down the river. In later life, these despicable dregs of humanity sell their souls and pals for power, filthy lucre or just out of jealousy.

The word nerd hadn’t entered the English vocabulary then. But Colombo schoolboys who come under the influence of Sanskrit and Pali conjure up and coin some of the most fanciful phrases imaginable. So we called these self-righteous, patronising, sneaky devils ponnayas. Translated roughly into Anglo-saxon it can mean anything from hermaphrodite to lily-livered transvestite.

They took it stoically. I suppose they had no choice. But the nerd network kept grinding on like the Gestapo, manipulating, scheming and exaggeratedly reporting “normal” schoolboy infractions to the authorities.

They were the good guys in the white hats, or so they imagined, and we the bad guys in the black hats. They were the trusted school lawmen who never had a chance of heroically riding out into the sunset, for the simple reason that they walked with their heads cowed in sack-cloth and ashes fashion. Their saunters out of the school square were invariably followed by unflattering sobriquets, hisses and derisive boos.

Weighed down by their enormous responsibilities as college prefects, no doubt, they were duty bound to report the matter to the master of discipline, a ridiculous, rotund figure in khaki shorts and stockings on whom we had bestowed the equally ridiculous nickname of “Atta.”He always carried a switch and a policeman’s whistle.

But tyranny has never won the day anywhere. History has proved that often. Wherever there is tyranny there is resistance in all its varied forms. Some of the wild bunch managed to finagle slots into the old-boy network and contrived to get more of their friends into key positions.

Then it was our turn to bring about a revolution in the cop squads, the music society and the drama society, among other extra curricula organisations.

The way most nerds looked, they kindled a passionate craving in every public-spirited person to throw stones at them. I, for one, could never see eye to eye with them even on the most innocuous of subjects. The simple reason for this was that at least three of them were afflicted with such bad squints that they had to stand in a north-easterly direction in order to talk to a person facing them.

One of the most obnoxious of these misbegotten nerds must have been born around Christmastime. His parents named him Nicholas. But I always referred him as “Knicker-less”, no need to stress the obvious.

He complained once to the highest school authority about my habit of calling him Knicker-less. He also whinged bitterly that I had referred to him as “homo erectus” believing that I meant his sexual preferences. But I was exonerated on both counts. You can’t punish a person for his pronunciation or knowledge of the evolutionary process, now, can one?

We tried to keep these opportunists out of our school music shows which were staged with shared talent from the neighbouring convent. But after a prolonged battle, this same Knickerless won out in his attempt to sing of all songs ‘The Minstrel Boy.’As compere, I objected vehemently knowing it would mean disaster but the school authorities were adamant. They wouldn’t budge. It was the era of pop music, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, The Beatles, The Swinging Blue Jeans, the era of the electric guitar and we were to be subjected to a song nearly as old as “Greensleeves.”

I introduced Knickerless, pregnant pause and all: “Ladies and gentlemen, introducing something different this evening. A cabaret of sorts, evergreen, old fashioned, but slightly up-beat. Presenting . . . Knicker-less.” I winked at my corpulent friend on the drums and while walking back into the wings said: “Take it from the top, Tubby.”

The drummer, percussionist extraordinaire gave him a beat that was a cross between rock and bossanova. Poor Knickerless stopped midway, tried to take it from the beginning again, failed and was booed off stage. In later years he claimed that a stunning girl from the neighbouring convent had thrown flowers at him on his way home immediately after the show. What he failed to mention, however, was that the vivacious wench had failed to take the flowers out of the pot.

Many moons later, working as a volunteer for a group akin to the Samaritans, I received a call from Knickerless. He wanted to end his life he said. I recognised the wheezy voice immediately. Lamentably, even in adulthood, I saw that he was the same self-seeker, second hand and dehumanised.

“Who is that?” he hissed. “It is me the devil of St Ben’s,” I said. I just could not resist the rest: “I shall wait at the end of this line for you to blow your brains out. I once heard someone blow his brains out and quite enjoyed it. I would like to hear it again.”

I insisted that despite his reprehensible behaviour I would, with exemplary Christian charity, write an appropriately terse epitaph and provide the tombstone at my own expense. His curiosity aroused he wanted to know the commemorative testimonial I had in mind. I casually answered: “Under this sod lies another!”

“You are mad,” he snapped and hung up. No cause for alarm, really, because he is still alive and kicking. The good, exciting things in life never happen to nerds.

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