I found my youngest watching a series called Freaks and Geeks the other night.  It was made in 1999 – the dark ages as far as my kids are concerned – and it has a cast of future stars to die for: a teenage James Franco, baby-faced Seth Rogen, a young Ben Stiller (to mention a few).  It’s a high school series about a girl mathelete who starts hanging out with a bunch of loser burnouts and her younger brother who is navigating his freshman year.

I asked my kids which group they fell into at school  – freak or geek?  Both insisted they were freaks (the cool kids in the show) not geeks (the nerds).

“Would you have called yourself a freak before you saw the programme?”  They paused for a minute.  Shook their heads.

“What is a freak?”  They both rushed in with “someone who’s weird…someone who’s different…an odd person…”

“So is that you two?”  I asked.

They both looked exasperated: “Daaaad!”

I got out of the way and let them enjoy the rest of their programme in peace.  Of course the point is we’re all freaks and geeks in some measure, we’re all different.  We all have our quirks and our similarities.  And that, as Squarehead would say, is OK.