It’s good to be a wonk.
wonk
: a person preoccupied with arcane details or procedures in a specialized field; broadly : nerd
(Thank you, Merriam-Webster)
Last night, my 10-year-old (many of you know her as Sweetness) was on a webcam chat with her father, and I was sitting on the bed while she sat at the desk, regaling him with, from start to finish, the entire story of the movie Coraline, which she has watched over and over again since we first opened the package on Tuesday. As she’s telling him the entire story, his part in the conversation being the occasional “yes” or “wow” wedged in when the child took a breath, I sat there and thought, “She’s a story wonk.”
It takes one to know one.
Of course, I love that she’s a wonk. I adore wonks, of all flavors, not just story wonks. The fact that she happens to be the same brand of wonk as I am makes me deliriously happy, but I just love wonks in general. Anyone who finds one particular thing so utterly fascinating that their enthusiasm makes them completely unaware of the fact that they’ve hijacked a conversation for 45 minutes is someone I can get behind. Equally, I love getting hijacked by wonks, even if I’m not particularly interested in the topic. Conversational hijacking by a blowhard who just wants to hear his own voice – whatever – but a wonk can corner me at a party any day.
It’s the enthusiasm that gets me, the moment you see in someone’s eyes that the love for their subject has carried them to a kind of intellectual nirvana where nothing can touch them. The enthusiasm is so powerful that it lifts me, too, and before I know it, I’ve picked up their flavor of wonkdom and I’m fascinated too. That’s power. That’s passion. That’s magic.
Alton Brown is a food wonk. Rachel Maddow is a policy wonk. And my daughter, god bless her, is a story wonk. As am I, and as – most likely, since you found your way here – are you. It’s a wonderful, beautiful thing to behold, and as I watch both of my girls (Sweetness’s little sister, Light, is a life wonk, with boundless enthusiasm for experience, which I find charming as all get out) grow into their individual wonkdoms, I am proud beyond measure. No matter what happens to them, no one will ever take their wonk away. Go forth into the world and wonk out, m’dears.
Then come back and tell me all about it.
I love wonks too. I also think I are one. I get so excited about things that I can’t stop talking about them. For instance, I read a book when I was 16 called Circus Doctor by J.Y. Henderson, vet for Ringling Bros. Circus. At 18 I met Dr.Henderson and spent a week of dinners with him while The Circus was at the Canadian National Exhibition. He introduced me to all the people who were the stunt doubles for the actors in the movie “The Greatest Show on Earth:” He showed me all the animals he was currently treating and had the patience to answer all my questions no matter how inane.
I wrote a blog about the circus in Aug. 2007 and when I went back to check on the content I found a comment by Dr. Henderson’s granddaughter the day after I had tried to find out about him on the internet. Needless to say I tried to find her and I did…on Facebook. Yesterday she not only answered my message but invited me to be a friend. Then I find out she is also related to The Great Wallendas whom had terrified me for years with their pyramid high wire act without a net. Great excitement for me.
Is that wonky enough for you?
Hey, a circus wonk! I love it!
I am a book wonk. There is no one in my little town to talk books with. My kind of books or ‘my authors’ . Any version of the romance genre. So when I am on the internet talking books or, better yet, at a real life booksigning I get carried away.
I’ve just started a new job within the same organization, in a totally different field. We like to move people around before they get too good at anything, so I’ve gone from being deeply immersed in Media Relations, to project managing infrastructure projects. But after a few years of being deeply immersed in media, I still can’t quite let go, so every time I see something on the internet which would, a couple of months ago, have set the office on fire, I still can’t help exclaiming, “Oh my god, that’s really interesting!” out loud, then having to explain it to the rest of my office, while their eyes glaze over, and I slowly realize that maybe it’s not that interesting after all, and I have officially become the new office crazy person. I liked being a media wonk, because there was always an element of insanity in it. I’m not looking forward to the next two years of becoming an infrastructure wonk, and not being invited to dinner parties any more…
Sometimes I think I’m too wonky for my own good. Religion, science, books….learning, mostly. I’m a wonk about learning stuff.
Oh, and Penny? I once broke down in the town in Florida where the circus folk winter. It was quite an experience.
I’m a writer so it’s almost a given I’m a story wonk.
But I think that love comes from the love of gray areas. The “depends” answers of the world. I remember I had a professor I couldn’t stand. He liked to hear the sound of his own voice. Yet he asked the class something one day that stayed with me and helped me understand my love of the gray areas.
So, he asked the class, “Who here doesn’t lie?”
Of course majority of the class didn’t raise their hand. The few “honest” people in the class were asked to stand up. He then said, “Imagine you were in Germany at the time of the Nazis. You were hiding people in your basement. The Nazis asked you if you were hiding any Jews. Would you lie then?”
Those few people who had said a strong never were now in the gray area.
I love it. It’s the main reason why I went to school to become a paralegal.
I know I’m a little late to this party, but I have to tell you how wonderful it is to find a place where no one will think I’m weird for bending my husband’s ear for a half-hour about how Warrant’s song (you remember Warrant, the 80′s hair band…? maybe I’m dating myself) “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is really a cool little piece of flash fiction.
Welcome, D! Good to have you here.
I’m a little late too, just having found you. I am a family wonk, so I love your story about Sweetness telling her father about the movie. Bet her daddy loved every word and delighted expressions. Oh, for every child to have the best life. Sweetness & Light ~ may you have the best life ever.