Centers and peripheries

I just sat in on a highly technical IT meeting. Gbics, single-mode fibre channel, Brocade switches, SAN fabric, etc. I understood a little. Very little. But I knew what they were talking about.

Walking home I was thinking about all the different groups that I have had at least a partial membership. In high school, I took an AP course, but was not one of the AP "nerds." I remember some of my fellow class mates laughing loudly at a cartoon someone had clipped out of a magazine. The cartoon showed some people exiting a theater, saying "cliches, cliches." The play was Hamlet. I got the joke. But I didn't think it was nearly as funny as my fellow classmates. But the top students in my graduating class knew me, and I knew them.

I was in the band. But the core band people--the serious ones who went on to play in college bands were a different group. They knew me, and I knew them.

I was an athlete. I lettered in tennis and gymnastics; wrestled for a year. The jocks knew me, and I knew them.

But I wasn't really a full member in any of those groups. I kind of feel that way now. I know the full-out IT geeks, and they know me. They laugh when one of my historian friends refers to me as a techno-geek. They know true geeks, and I don't even come close. I am comfortable in academic settings. In fact, that may be my biggest membership now, but since I don't have a full-time teaching job, I am still only a partial member. When I am around fundamentalist Christians, I understand the language. I don't like it, but I understand it. I understand it a little more than I think they realize. But I am also quite comfortable around so-called "unbelievers" and completely understand when they wonder aloud why the fundies believe in a 6,000 year old earth. I understand the pro-life and pro-choice conversations. I am comfortable in mac and windows environments. :)

I really don't know what this means. I know there are numerous groups that award me no affiliation or understanding or comfort level. I know there are groups that I am largely intolerant of. I guess, I feel a certain outsider status today. What that means, I don't know.