Been wanting to write abt this movie for a while…”Revenge Of The Nerds”…an absolute classic comedy – & after the slide we posted the other day, on all the things that affect us in life, I found my window to draw the correlation.
When I first started talking abt the idea of #5in5 & a MH Alliance (Oct ‘17) I was explaining the concept to someone I’d just met. We were having lunch, & after laying out my vision he said back to me: “I get it…it’s like this tribe that everyone in the world is a part of, they just don’t all know it yet.”
That stranger at the time, Brian Bolten, would go on to become one of my best friends & a Board member. I’ll never forget his take bc he took a concept that was intricate, & was able to break it down to the least “common” denominator – belonging.
Back to the Lambda kids. When you first watch this movie, you typically relate to one of the very stereotypical groups – the nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, Omega Mu girls, etc – essentially the buckets society tells us we should fit into, perfectly, based on how we look or act, or who we feel comfortable arnd.
But what’s beautiful is, at the end of the movie, Lewis Skolnik takes the mic from his friend Gilbert Lowe, in front of all of Adams College, & delivers the following powerful words:
“I’m a nerd too….Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you’re a nerd or not, why don’t you just come on down here & join us.”
And what follows is amazing – the entire college (sans the jocks who still can’t accept it), all come down to join Lewis & Gilbert, bc they realize – beautiful/not, cool/not, athletic/not, they’d all at some point felt what Lewis described. They’d all been in that situation…making them all part of the same tribe.
Yes it’s a bit cheesy…& yes it’s a movie, but no it’s not so far off from reality. Maybe we aren’t all nerds…but we’re all affected by life’s inevitable challenges. Ranging from disorder to “just getting by,” there are times we’ve all been impacted. We’re all part of a MH continuum that ties us together as one tribe. #5in5
When I first started talking abt the idea of #5in5 & a MH Alliance (Oct ‘17) I was explaining the concept to someone I’d just met. We were having lunch, & after laying out my vision he said back to me: “I get it…it’s like this tribe that everyone in the world is a part of, they just don’t all know it yet.”
That stranger at the time, Brian Bolten, would go on to become one of my best friends & a Board member. I’ll never forget his take bc he took a concept that was intricate, & was able to break it down to the least “common” denominator – belonging.
Back to the Lambda kids. When you first watch this movie, you typically relate to one of the very stereotypical groups – the nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, Omega Mu girls, etc – essentially the buckets society tells us we should fit into, perfectly, based on how we look or act, or who we feel comfortable arnd.
But what’s beautiful is, at the end of the movie, Lewis Skolnik takes the mic from his friend Gilbert Lowe, in front of all of Adams College, & delivers the following powerful words:
“I’m a nerd too….Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you’re a nerd or not, why don’t you just come on down here & join us.”
And what follows is amazing – the entire college (sans the jocks who still can’t accept it), all come down to join Lewis & Gilbert, bc they realize – beautiful/not, cool/not, athletic/not, they’d all at some point felt what Lewis described. They’d all been in that situation…making them all part of the same tribe.
Yes it’s a bit cheesy…& yes it’s a movie, but no it’s not so far off from reality. Maybe we aren’t all nerds…but we’re all affected by life’s inevitable challenges. Ranging from disorder to “just getting by,” there are times we’ve all been impacted. We’re all part of a MH continuum that ties us together as one tribe. #5in5