Monday, April 13, 2009

I Guess Nerds don't Translate

Last night I was in the company of a couple Europeans and an American. We were sharing car crash stories. I told my sister's story, when she totaled her car while eating a box of jumbo Nerds. Apparently the Nerds flew everywhere at collision. When we went to clean out her car, there were multi-colored nerds scattered high and low. She was embarrassed by the evidence. So we spent a significant amount of time removing every single itty bitty Nerd from the totaled car.

The American thought it was funny. Because it is funny. Say you were working at a garage and you see a totaled car. Then you see rainbow Nerds everywhere inside that car. It is very evident what happened. This person crashed his or her car while eating Nerds. A big box, not one of those dinky fun-sized boxes or two-colored ones. The car crash involved a box of king-sized Nerds. Funny, right?

Well it's not funny if you don't know what Nerds are. If you don't understand how pointless of a candy it is, that Nerds are in fact clumps of dyed sugar. If you don't know that on a box of Nerds, there are pictures of cartooned Nerds rollerskating and skydiving and playing frisbee. If you don't understand that a large box of this candy is such a ridiculous amount of Nerds. I can't explain it. They're Nerds. It's funny.

But it's pointless to try to explain Nerds. It was a lost cause. I'll just have to accept that Nerds are part of my culture, and outsiders will never understand it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I like your car crash story in Joe's car for a pointless lunch in an extremely crappy f aux Italian restaurant.