Poindexter

My boy sometimes says: ' Shut it Poindexter'. He does this in a pleasant way. Not snarling with teenage venom but with a whimsical smile. I always say: 'Where's that from? What does it mean?' Suddenly today I remembered the Internet! I looked it up and it's a reference to a scientist in the old cartoon 'Felix the Cat'. "As a reference to the Felix the Cat character, the term "Poindexter" is now applied to people who are overly nerdy, geeky or bookish." says some nerdy, geeky Wikipedia author.

What I want to know now is how this became part of the whimsical & ephemeral lexicon that is teenager speak. Felix the Cat died a long time ago. Squashed, no doubt, under the wheels of a less innocent, poorly animated Japanese cartoon.