Do You Get the Joke?

There’s a series of classic Saturday Night Live sketches starring Gilda Radner and Bill Murray as stuffy-nosed, bespectacled Lisa Leubner and her weird, sweaty boyfriend, Todd.  They played nerds back in the 1970s when nerds weren’t cool like they are now. These were the kind of nerds we laughed at instead of with, like we do the pitch-perfect, endearing and oddly sexy contemporary hero-nerds of The Big Bang Theory.

Mothers of nerds didn’t use to have much to brag about, unless they stayed in their same circle of momfriends long enough for their brilliant son or daughter to come home for their 10-year high school reunion rich and successful.

How fortunate for those raising unique children during this great nerd zenith, when smart kids can get some respect.  These days there are Math Olympiads and Future Problem Solver Bowls followed by fancy awards banquets, the special competitions and recognition reserved mostly for jocks not so long ago.

The dweeb revolution, despite the existence of Bill Gates in our collective consciousness for several decades, has been a long time coming.  Recall that gay characters held lead roles on TV long before BBT’s Johnny Galecki was allowed to hook-up with his show’s resident hot blonde. And we’re eager to watch and even hopeful for a romantic outcome.

This trend has opened up the ranks of MotherBraggers to a vastly larger world of parents who can compete for attention with talk of test scores and karate belts.  And it may also have made the intelligent junior high kids a lot less likely to suffer scorn because they can’t throw a ball.  No one has to throw a ball in 7th grade pre-calc.

It’s also hard to say which BraggerMoms are the most smug these days: those with gifted athletes or those with gifted thinkers.  The worst is obviously the MB with a hybrid who’s both.

But back to Todd and Lisa, rich with laughs on so many levels.  Todd wore his pants belted up around his armpits, pocket protector shoved in his short-sleeved shirt — standard issue costume for 70s geekdom.  Yet, I remember knowing people who wore their pants in that exact position, verifying straight up dorkiness.  I always wondered if when they laughed at “Todd,” they knew they were laughing at their own style peculiarities.

So I also wonder if the Motherbraggers who laugh the hardest are the MotherBraggers who don’t realize they’re laughing at themselves.