Here I was, enjoying a slight respite of froied protabella mushrooms and shrimp risotto at Backstreets, a remarkably good Italian restaurant in Blacksburg when i inadvertently get drawn into the conversations of the next table. Not hard since there was a contingent engineering students taking their nutrition, as I was. How did I know they were engineering students, seeing as I am an engineer, the familiarity factor had a lot to do with it. Besides that of course, there is the difficult to conceal signs: for one thing, there was only one girl amongst a seas of pimply faced boys. The eager waves of inane conversations lapping at the shores of my patience. It seems that engineers have a difficult making themselves understood while dealing with other more social lifeforms, but while they are with their own they tend to open up and talk about...absolutely nothing. It seems geeks don't change through the ages, I know, I are one.
There was a leader. The others let him do all the talking since they don't want to call attention to themselves. He sat there upon his temporary throne, chattering away about everything and nothing, dispensing mirth and frivolity, expounding on complex and important issues, tell ribald, as ribald a story as maladjusted virgins can tell. And at the same time reinforcing his opinion that he is by the wittiest and clever chap that there had ever lived.
The others added color to his comments when ever their is the slimmest crack in the wall to wall sound of innocuousness. The topics went from music, or what passes for music in geekdom. Monty Python, of course, that is de rigeur for engineers. South Park, the Simpsons, speed metal, collegiate rivalry, and numerous other things I didn't catch. It is good to see that geekdom is happily preserved for posterity. I can rest easy knowing that the preoccupation with stuff no one else cares about persists in the engineer's world. How truly frightening.
