The Biker Babe and the Nerd Boy

The Biker Babe and the Nerd Boy: When Love Is Truly Blind

We all know one: The woman that all of the biker babe stereotypes were written about. This one is a perfectly nice woman, but there are people who would never know that because they would never take the chance to get to know her in any way. Ah, well, that is their loss we always say; she doesn't care enough to say even that. You either take her at face value or you don?t take her at all.

She has always been a free spirit, all black leather and rough edges, riding that big, honkin' Harley like a Valkyrie into battle. She never talked about her romantic life and none of us wanted to broach the subject with her. When she was ready to say something, anything on any topic, she tended to just pull back her shoulders and bray out her comments, proclamations, or laments and then move on. One of the older women in our riding club said that she had had her heart broken by the very man who had taught her how to ride, the very man who had pretty much let her inner biker babe out in the first place. He left her, the bike stayed.

So, imagine our surprise (well, shock) when she walked in, still all black leather and rough edges but with a twist: This time, the woman was beaming from ear to ear, the kind of grin that starts at the lips and then travels to every inch of the body, twinkling from the eyes and dancing through the limbs. She was all but glowing, she was so happy. It took us all a few seconds to adjust our minds to what we were seeing. After all, as sweet as she could be, none of us had really seen her this overwhelmingly happy in a very long time. The door opened again and she turned around and while none of us would have thought it possible, her smile got even bigger. The man who stood there looked kind of timid, like he might startle if anyone made a sudden move in his direction. He was thin, but not scrawny and while he had on a leather jacket, his was brown and did not have anything "bike" about it. He had wire rim glasses on his kind and intelligent looking face. In other words, he looked like a nerd but most importantly, he looked lost. She walked over, twining her arms through his. He kissed her on the forehead, the same sappy smile on his face when he looked at her.

They say that love is blind, and in this case it might really have been. But, it also looked like love knew what it was doing, because after they rode off on their matching Harley's that day, we realized she was a softer version of herself?all black leader and rough edges still, only a little milder. And, after a week of showing up with her at our riding club, he was no longer the "nerd" nor the outsider, he was just himself and we each found ourselves liking him for all of his best qualities.