Say what you will about stereotypes, but they aren't always so wrong. More directly, they're a good use of inductive logic. Perhaps in a more roundabout way, they're everyday proof of what cultural anthropologists call universal personality types. Read a few ethnographies to understand.

Certain stereotypes about geeks seem more or less true when you've spent 5 years of college as a computer science major, being in computer labs for 30 or more hours a week for all those years.

Now, this is the story of a guy I didn't really know very well. In fact, I don't think I ever formally met him. I did, though, share a couple jokes with him but they were so insignificant that I'm amazed I even remember anything about those exchanges. He was one of the extras in the great play of my life. One of the background characters that God would recycle into different scenes when desperate for actors to fill up the scene. I never learned his name, and perhaps if Descartes' suspicions are right and I am just a brain in a jar, then perhaps this guy never even had a name.

But anyways, so the stereotypes I've seen about computer geeks indicate that they are oftentimes more sensitive, and not real macho types of people. Geeks with real deep voices, grotesque amounts of body hair, and who are really big and tall just don't seem to be commonplace. However, I think that stereotypically doctors do have those traits.

Doctors on TV and in movies seem to have jet black hair, or sometimes what used to be jet black hair before grey hairs started to appear. And they seem to have lots of body hair and really deep voices. Think of George Clooney from ER, or the doctor from the old 1970's show Emergency. And then there's the way they dress. They seem to love wearing those OR scrubs, or at least those blue shirts with the v-necks that look like OR scrubs.

So, there was this guy in the computer labs who had really black hair with some grey in it. And he was a total ape man with all this chest hair peaking out from the v-neck of his OR scrub t-shirt. And he was this really tall, big-boned sort of guy. And he had a really deep voice. And when he let his grooming go, he didn't do it in the way that the geeks did. The geeks would always keep on shaving but let their hair fall down into these horrible bowl haircut nests on their heads, with the hairs fraying out over their ears and in the back of their necks. This guy, though, would get stubble and his hair would go up real crazy like, as if he had a fro. He definitely didn't seem right among all the geeks in the computer labs.

And when the other computer geeks wanted to tune people out and get into the zone, they would use portable CD players and headphones and listen to cool music. This guy just put on those bulky ear protectors that one might find at a shooting range.

He totally didn't fit in, and I don't think he was really a geek. I think he was probably some medical school dropout who was hoping that a computer career would be lucrative or something like that.

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