"Aiken is a Role Model"

REFLECTIONS: Aiken is a positive role model

OCTOBER 2004

Already you have read the headline and proclaimed me insane.

It’s true. I, Nick Powills, endorse Clay Aiken as a positive role model for America’s increasingly disenfranchised youth.

By now, you’re probably expecting a witty punchline to accompany my joke. Well, you aren’t going to get one.

Clay Aiken is a role model for many reasons, but most importantly for his nerd status. "Ah, there it is. There’s his bash," you say. But hear me out. Aiken wasn’t the best looking guy, and probably never had a good-looking girlfriend. He had the glasses and the Urkel pants. But he had a dream. He had a dream to not only be successful, but to get the ladies and be loved.

I am sure Aiken had to put up with a lot of garbage growing up. "Hey nerd," was probably the nicest of the many epithets he encountered. But he never gave up. He never lowered his head and put his dream to sleep. Not once. And look where he is today. He's at the top of the charts and has one of the biggest fan followings in the world. Pretty impressive for a nerd, wouldn’t you say?

Now, Aiken’s become something straight out of the Avril Lavigne song "Sk8er Boi" - albeit a bizarro world example - and I am sure all those people who made fun of him are kicking themselves for being so mean when they could have helped him pick up his books when a jock knocked them down, or invited him to eat lunch with them. Some of the world’s biggest nerds turn into the most popular studs in the end – just ask Bill Gates.

Props to Clay Aiken, and props to the people who never picked on him, but instead offered friendship and support.

Unfortunately, I cannot include myself in that category. I know I made fun of nerds growing up. I even created a comic book based on a nerd in my sixth-grade class. Even worse, a local comic shop bought it and sold copies of it on its shelves. I now feel bad, as I have realized how right my great-grandma really was. "If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all."

So, to Lumino's readers, try being nice to the nerdy guy at work or at school, because you never know, he just might be famous one day and you will want that nerd covering your back.