revenge of the nerds

I went out last night to see Jen play a great set at the Baltic Room. She was amazing. I got to meet a lot of her friends, of which she had many. The introduction usually went something like, "Hey, I want you to meet my friend from high school." And everybody thought it was awesome that we are still friends after so many years, which it is. But about two-thirds of the time, people would say, "God, I was such a geek/nerd/dork in high school." I can say emphatically and without hesitation, I was a big nerd and a dork in high school, for god's sake I was on the Math Team and I was (and am) a big girl with feminist ideas and a rock solid anti-touching policy. But I wonder, can all the people who are claiming high school nerdhood really have been nerds? First of all, there are way too many people claiming to be a part of the band geek brotherhood...the numbers just don't measure up. Are we confusing nerdorgeek with just not being popular, because those are two completely different things. Second, if they were nerds, puberty must have hit them in college or something. I mean they fought really hard to break out of the geek mold because most of these people were very good-looking and cool as hell (*cough*Robb*cough). Third, if all the people out in clubs are former nerds, where are all the old cool people? Don't they go out or are they still sitting at home reliving their high school glory days, maybe they're still having parties at each other's houses? Or are there actually elite cool kid clubs that you have to prove your secondary school popularity...a secret society of cheerleaders, jockeys, and preppie rich kids