I (Really Do) Heart Nerds

My theory is that it's the nerds who get all the hot girls.

Nothing gets me more infatuated with science than a man at a lab bench. Two weeks ago, I heard Brian Greene on the radio discussing his self-proclaimed noble pursuit of revealing the universe's secrets. Last week, my request for his (first and therefore not exactly news to you) book "The Elegant Universe" was granted - a 31st birthday gift from my very sweet, very sexy, very brilliant (read nerdy) molecular biologist husband. And ever since I got it, I can't put it down. Nor can I get the idea out of my mind of keeping Brian Greene in my basement, as a sort of sexy human pet with whom I could ruminate about string theory.

But in the end, it's not the oh so cute scientists that make me resonate like a superstring to physics (and properties of physics). Indeed, it finally occurred to me that my lifelong and hardly satisfied thirst for understanding of the relative world is actually a strong desire for a respite from the things in life I can't order or make sense of. It's my way of escaping small mindedness, violence, cruelty and hate. Of understanding the why of life and the inevitability of afterlife.

And so, my idea of heaven is not an (after)lifetime of sipping mai tais in a Bahama cabana with a bespectacled nerd, although I wouldn't complain about that exactly. But instead, having this and the next and the next universe's secrets laid bare. To know how it all works, and why it all works, to me, is to be one with god.