In third grade, I fashioned myself a budding sociologist, and laid out what I believed to be an irrefutable system by which I could categorize the entire third-grade class. There were, according to my scientific observations, three distinct social echelons into which every one of my classmates could be placed. There were the popular kids, of course—the girls with pretty hair, and the boys who could run farther than a hundred feet without bending over in agonizing pain. There were the obviously unpopular kids—the girl who sat inside during recess to read books and the boy who brought his pet mouse to the playground in his jacket pocket. (Listen, I know these are cruel and arbitrary factors, but really, what the fuck kind of child brings a mouse to school?) And then there was the third, in-between group of kids who clearly weren’t popular, but weren’t exactly unpopular, who simply existed beneath the radar, somewhere in the middle of it all. I’ll let you guess which group I placed myself in.

This is, of course, a complete asshole’s way of thinking, and a cheap way for an insecure little shit to convince himself he’s not at the bottom of the totem pole. (And sure, I was, like, the class clown or whatever, and that counted for something, but still. Dick move.)

I guess it was important for my nerdy, chubby, insecure self to have a place, even if that place was a fantasyland I created in the middle of the social order. I could never be one of the quirky, carefree kids who didn’t give a flying fuck about what other people thought of him. I cared deeply about what everybody else thought, and even if I wasn’t the most popular, it mattered that there was an identity that I fit into.

And this way of thinking stayed with me well into high school, where my nerdy asshole-ness could reach its fullest form. I needed an identity to cling to, after all, even if that identity was to be an asshole nerd. So that’s what I became.