The Mighty Jerd 101 (aka My Nerd Origin Story)

*opens some reader mail*

“So there has been a lot of talk about sundry geekery* and some fantastic fitness advice; but not much about you, oh Mighty Jerd.  How do you get your geek on?

Sincerely,

Loyal Reader”

What is that you say?  You want to know about the Jerd’s personal geeks?

I hope you have time!  And I secretly hope you believe I am cool enough to get reader mail too…  Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me! So let’s take a stroll down Geek History Lane shall we?

The Early Years

Pong, bitches!

It all started with a game called Pong, specifically the General Instruments AY-3-8500 model which had 6 games.  Each of which was a variation of a bouncing white square on the TV screen.  Frighteningly boring now; but back in 1977 that was living large, and we played the hell out of it at my house thankyouverymuch!

I spent my childhood getting whipped at Pong by my mother on a regular basis and playing my Mattel Handheld Football game (http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/FB.htm) when out and about.  I could have cared less about actual football but that game had little red dots moving around, and it beeped!

When I was 10 my father bought an Atari 800, the king of the 8bit systems, for us.  Not only did it play games, but you could buy the 8k Atari Basic ROM cartridge (yes, you read that correctly, 8 whole K!) and start some rudimentary programming.  I spent a lot of time learning how to program in that simple language, and countless hours designing long and intricate ASCII art animations.  When I wasn’t doing that I was crushing high scores on games like: Donkey Kong, Joust and Frogger.

After a little time, we got the external magnetic tape drive and 5 1/4″ floppy drive.  We had one game for that tape drive, Blue Max.  A WWII air combat  side scroller which took about 45 minutes to load up.  Seriously, I would put the tape in and start the load and then go grab lunch and do something else before returning to our computer room to have it still not be ready yet.  It was infuriatingly painful! That was the price you paid for your geekery back in those days though, the toll you had to pay the troll for the privilege to cross the bridge into the digital playground if you will…

It was during this time that I found myself learning to play my first Role Playing Game with some of the older kids at the community pool.  Basic Dungeons & Dragons.  I think I was 8 at the time and all I can recall, other than the fact that we played it at one of the picnic tables, is that I kept arguing with the Dungeon Master that I wanted one of my PC’s languages to be Stirge (anyone who has played D&D knows how absolutely ridiculous that is, but I was 8. Don’t judge me!)

And that leaves us at middle school.

I will weave a tale of super-heroes, post-apocalyptic car races and more quarters than I can count being wasted on standing arcade games in another post. Hopefully this gives you a bit of insight into how this whole package of awesome got started! What about you? What started your nerd engines? I want to know!

Also check out our YouTube channel (if you want access to our Nerd-Core Fitness exercise videos), follow me on Twitter, and like us on Facebook and Google+ (there is content on both not available here on the site.) There are so many different ways for you to get your daily dose of Jerdly goodness so don’t miss out!

(Want to keep following the Mighty Jerd’s Spectacular Nerd Voyage? It continues in the next installment – The Mighty Jerd 102!)

* not to be confused with Geek and Sundry, a spectacular web collaboration.  Check them out loyal reader!