The meek shall inherit the prom

July 22, 2005 4:15 PM

Steuard Jensen for Prom King! Three nerds get the resident high school science geek on the ballot for Prom King, and...well, you'll have to read the story to get the answer. Like in fiction, sometimes in real life the protagonist/hero comes from the most unexpected position.
posted by Kickstart70 (14 comments total)

I knew that since it was a dance and all I should dress up a little, so I wore a nice purplish-red wool sweater (which Colleen was allergic to, as I learned later) and a pair of grey slacks.

Ah, high school.
posted by ODiV at 4:28 PM on July 22, 2005

I feel really bad for any child saddled with a name like Steuard. But I probably would have picked on him if he went to my school. You know, so they wouldn't pick on me.

And I like stories like this.
posted by fenriq at 4:56 PM on July 22, 2005

Great story.
posted by grouse at 5:08 PM on July 22, 2005

> I feel really bad for any child saddled with a name like Steuard

What about Betsy Beverage?
posted by NewBornHippy at 5:09 PM on July 22, 2005

Thanks for cheering me up after all the bad news this week...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 5:18 PM on July 22, 2005

Vote for Pedro.
posted by sdrawkcab at 5:38 PM on July 22, 2005

that guy needs an editor. i really thought there'd be some much more dramatic climax. it's all denouement.
posted by Hat Maui at 5:47 PM on July 22, 2005

...and then, unable to get past his glories of High School, he grew up to be a meth addict and prostitute. And died. Alone. The end.

Ah. That's better.
posted by tkchrist at 5:53 PM on July 22, 2005

My senior year I did lose Class Clown by one vote - to my best friend.
posted by Samizdata at 5:56 PM on July 22, 2005

tkchrist, that's sorta what i'm after, but i had more of a "carrie" type story in mind
posted by Hat Maui at 6:19 PM on July 22, 2005

At my high school, the year after I graduated, our homecoming king was a tiny little asian man who was a finalist at the Intel science search for chemistry. He's at Harvard now.
posted by aznblader at 6:38 PM on July 22, 2005

Steuard is like some sort of extraordinary everyman ubergeek. His name is Steuard, he was president of the math club and prom king in high school, is a well known tolkein scholar and is also a physicist apparently working on some string theory:

To give just a quick overview, I have worked on some problems related to tachyon condensation in various string theories and boundary states in compactified conformal field theories, and we are currently studying the effects of membrane instantons in heterotic M-theory and the effects of worldsheet instantons on Kaluza-Klein monopoles

Right.

Some more Steuard related links:
The Great Balrog Slippers Debate
Sauron's Diary
String Theory Slide Presentation
Tom Bombadil Wikipedia Entry

I always like finding interesting characters out there doing cool things, thanks for the post...
posted by crunchywelch at 8:42 PM on July 22, 2005

Thanks for the link. Good story. His friends were PR geniuses :)
posted by -harlequin- at 2:31 AM on July 25, 2005

In some ways, the low-key ending makes the story more appealing. Were this the Hollywood version, the jocks would have been furious and the cheerleaders would have hated him. In real life, it seems most of the school (including the head cheerleader) genuinely liked and respected this nerdy guy. I'm always glad when my fellow nerds get the respect we deserve.
posted by yankeefog at 7:13 AM on July 25, 2005