Jocks versus Nerds

I read somewhere, a while ago, that we never really outgrow our high school roles -- the two labels that separate us there.

Jocks grow up to be conservative, CEO or Archie Bunker types -- they seal big deals or drive bulldozers, smoke cigars, slap backs and scorn literature and the fine arts.

Nerds grow up to be liberal -- professors, protestors and such.

Granted, it is a sweeping generalization.

But I thought about it yesterday. A big guy, a former sports writer who used to work where I used to work, caught up with me. He remembered me but I had no clue, no memory of him at all.

Seems he's applying for work within the organization where I work. He wanted to come into my office and against my better judgment, I let him. Whereupon he told a "dirty joke" about a former coworker and then proceeded, during the course of an hour of largely solo speech, to chuckle and guffaw his way through some mildly racist commentary -- how he thinks he's going to survive with that attitude in a city that is 90 percent black, I don't know -- while I sat there very uncomfortable.

He wasn't trying to be mean. He was just being himself -- a big, hearty, crude, slap-on-the-back jock. I wasn't trying to be cold or prudish, just myself, a bite-my-tongue nerd.