Our section leader…

Whom could quite easilty be labelled “grumpy” does in fact have a great sense of humour. A couple of weeks ago he emailed me the following short story:

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For the last three days I have been working on a Los Angeles Times Sunday

Magazine Crossword Puzzle.  They are harder than the Washington Post Sunday

Magazine, but not as hard as the Newsday Saturday Stumpers.  Anyway…..



One of the clues is  “Nerd's Lack”  The answer is an eight letter word.



I could not think of an 8 letter word that applied to nerds.



Finally, this morning I got enough of the Vertical answers to discover the

answer:  Coolness.



As soon as I saw the answer, I said out loud so your mother could hear, “I

should have known that answer!”



I then explained to her that when I was stationed at Edwards AFB for a

year-and-a-half before she decided I was a good catch (or she decided she

wanted to go to Japan), I ran around with a fellow who was one of the people

that “The Fonz” must have been modelled on.  I do not remember his name, but

I can still see his face, and he wore glasses.



One day I mentioned to him that I thought I was getting a bit cool.  He said

something on the order of this:  Come on Greenland, you are not cool and

will never be cool, “even your parents knew that when they named you

Lenerd.”    (alternate spelling for Leonard.)



He pronounced it as if he were a French speaker:  Le Nerd.



I remember his response because it was so different from most people's

standard response:  You wouldn't be cool if you were sitting on a 20 pound

block of ice.



This morning I asked your mother if my lack of “coolness” was one reason she

was hesitant about marrying me.  She said, “Probably.”



But, I think of all the girls who didn't want to go out with Bill Gates when

he was a poor, struggling student…… 

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