A local guy died a really bizarre death the other day (hoo boy is THAT a story), and I thought I might have gone to school with him, so I dragged out my old high school yearbooks to see if I could look him up.
(Yearbooks: Facebook for old people.)
And I didn't find him, but I did take a big ol' trip down memory lane, which happens EVERY DAMN TIME I get out those yearbooks.
I went through a pretty big school system; there were 600 kids in my graduating class. Which means not only did I not hang out with everybody in my class, I didn't even KNOW a lot of the people in my class.
Of course, cliques were formed; I was a band geek and a choir nerd, and that's who I hung out with. I wasn't popular; I wasn't UNpopular; just somewhere in the middle, where most of us reside. I remember being bullied on the playground in elementary school, but that kind of stuff had pretty much faded out by high school; when you're in a class of 600, it's pretty easy to just avoid the bullies.
And while those of us in the middle knew who all the popular kids were, I'm pretty sure that the popular kids had no idea who WE were. Just the great unwashed, filling seats in study hall, dancing in their peripheral vision.
So here's a question: I read a lot of blogs. And I have YET to read a blog written by someone who says they were popular in high school. I read a LOT of blogs by people who say they were UNpopular; I read some blogs by people who were in the middle like me; but I don't think I've EVER read a blog by someone who was a head cheerleader, prom queen, dating-the-quarterback type gal.
So where did they go? Do none of them blog, or are they now claiming to have been UNpopular, just so they don't come across as stuck-up? (HAHAHA I WAS PROM QUEEN! IN YOUR FACE!)
What about you? Were you popular? Unpopular? Did you get picked on? Did you pick on other kids?
Just curious.
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You can e-mail me at rockycat24@yahoo.com
About Me
- rockygrace
- I was born in 1962; you do the math. (See also: I'm too lazy to remember to update this thing regularly.) I bought my first house in the summer of 2009; I share it with four cats and with the memories of The Runt and Little Girl, who both passed away in 2011. Rocky, the cat for whom this blog was named, passed away in 2008; I miss them all. I wish I lived somewhere where the winters weren't eight months long; other than that, life is good.
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10 comments:
Hmmm...I was captain of the volleyball and track teams and first chair in band, but I wasn't one of the popular kids (although I got along fine with them). I usually ate lunch with the "middle" kids.
I never bullied anyone and no one ever bullied me, although I was assigned to be a girl's "bodyguard" once. She rode my bus, was EXTREMELY poor (no indoor plumbing), came to school dirty, etc., and she got picked on big time. My job was to escort her to the bus to make sure no one picked on her.
One day, I got held up by a teacher and was a little late to the bus stop. By the time I got there, some a-hole kids had beat her up. I pretty much threatened to beat the CRAP out of those kids, and things were better after that. (That bullied girl and I became friends.)
I was slightly lower on the totem pole than the middle, but not quite with the massive unpopulars either. Just barely. I was bullied through at least my Sophomore year of high school. I was a first saprano in choir, but wasn't with the "populars" in that group, or had voice training, so I wasn't accepted. In fact, my choir teacher was so busy coddling them that she forgot all about my piano lessons that I signed up for with her. I had to walk home (over a mile) for nothing and she ended up telling me she was just too busy to continue, after about a week.
I wanted to play volleyball, but knew I wouldn't be accepted, so I started working at 13 babysitting, and 15 as a cashier (my mother brought home that application. Hm, wonder what she was trying to tell me?)
Outside of school time, I'd go run the school track at night to clear my head, I'd play tennis and swim during the day, maybe shoot some hoops too, but usually alone or with my boyfriend at the time.
Oh my gosh, I NEVER made first chair. There was a girl named Tracy who ALWAYS beat me out. Possibly because she, you know, PRACTICED.
And good for you for sticking up for the poor girl. There was a poor kid in my class, and he ended up the star of the drama club. Fred. I wonder whatever happened to him?
HA-HA and I spelled soprano wrong! (giggle)
BNG, I worked during high school, too! At the old Hi-Way Fruit Market.
That sounds like an awesome first job! Mine was at a little corner drug store/pharmacy. I had all kinds of responsibilities there besides being a cashier and back then you didn't have to have any kind of training to count out pills for prescriptions and put the labels on bottles. The girl that trained me her position also taught me how to drive stick shift.....or tried to.
There were only 30 kids in my high school class, and they were all (except me) related either by blood or by marriage ("her brother married my sister" kind of thing) and had been together as a group since kindergarten, so it was all one big happy family. No "ins" or "outs". We had two hoods and one bad girl, and a few guys who came to school with manure on their boots, but they were all nice and accepted because people knew their whole life stories. Advantages of an isolated mountain village.
I was bullied. Only asked out by intensely shy boys. Went to one party. So not popular. If I only could have written all my social interactions back then...
At the time, I felt wholly unpopular, but looking back, I was just middle of the road. I had some close friends and a lot of school friends, and even the popular kids knew who I was for the most part. They just didn't hang out with me.
Maybe no one really thinks they are popular. I meet people now who were football players or cheerleaders in high school, and it's not like they talk about high school as the glory days. I've never met anyone who gloats about it as an adult.
In grade school, I was the third kid up in the pecking order -- directly positioned atop the child who we would now refer to as "profoundly behaviorally disturbed" (I suspect a combo of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and a smorgasbord of sexual and physical abuse) and the impoverished girl who slept in her clothes with her little brother that peed the bed and who, thus, smelled like an uncleaned urinal. The only time I ever threw a punch in school was to protect the girl who smelled like pee from a mean little runt who bragged about catching my cats in his traplines. I later became a "band fag" (hey, it was the late 1970s...people still called each other "retards" too) etc. And my small town was also a very inbred place -- half the class was related by blood or marriage and given the high pregnancy-related attrition, by the time we graduated there were only about four kids left who would not have committed incest if they dated. You'd have thought I would have gotten a little more play in that situation, but no...
- Bridgett
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