Letters From High School Survivors
We had them all: jocks, trouble-makers, geeks, party-annimals, teacher’s pets, weirdos, bullies, pot-heads, and sluts. But no Prom Queen. Our private, college-prepatory school was above that silly stuff. Beauty contests were reserved for the public schools. However, in reality, my high school was as absorbed in reputations and gossip as a hot-off-the-press edition of an US Weekly magazine.
Rumors galloped from person to person at a feverish pace and with urgency as if we’d just been told the sky was falling. The juicier the gossip the quicker it spread throughout the school. In our tiny school we knew everything about everyone and what we didn’t know we assumed or fabricated. We didn’t give a damn, we just wanted excitement. A secret quickly entered the realm of public knowledge. Fact and fiction, scandal and deceit, all of it out in the open. Having my life put on display, assessed, and critiqued, that part I won’t miss.
But high school really was a blast. Who can forget weekend parties while the parents were out of town? Even though a small get-together always turned into a school-wide jamboree and something always got broken. Friday nights when a vivacious crowd gathered to support the school’s grid-iron gods. The blue and white bleachers filled with rowdy Cyclone fans. The elaborate dances that were the most anticipated and dreaded events of the year. Waiting to be asked, finding the perfect dress, trying to shed those extra pounds.
But all of it was about appearances: who looked the best, who scored the winning touchdown, who showed up with who. I always got the guy, made good grades, stayed enemy-free more or less, and ended up at one of the hardest colleges to get into; there wasn’t too much they could say. That’s probably why I liked high school after all.
Mallory, 2006
check out my blog Wanderlust
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But, when I got to high school, everything changed. Where once my grade school and junior high had been filled with kids I played with from the time I was five or six, my high school was now a melting pot of kids from other schools in the town I grew up in, those ‘Catholic’ kids, plus kids from the area where all the blacks lived.
High school was very different. It was class-based. Of course, I didn’t know that then, but I certainly can see it now. The kids that I considered my friends from my early years had now become part of the crowd of kids that were the jocks, the student council member, the beauty queens.
But I was no beauty queen. I was different too. Having contracted arthritis at age 10, my jaw somehow stopped developing and I had a severe recessed chin. And, to top things off, having been conceived by two parents who were both of British decent, I had big, round, green eyes. Have you ever been to England? I hadn’t, and this, of course, was how people in my family looked, and they seemingly accepted me just fine. So, what I was in for was completely unexpected. The ‘new’ kids in High School soon realized that I had these ‘abnormal’ features. So, with a recessed chin and big eyes that I was so fortunate to have inherited, I became known to those kids I had never met as ‘Fish’.
Being called ‘Fish’ every day of my freshman year had a profound effect. I withdrew. I contemplated suicide. And, my parents, rest their souls, had no clue. Not because they didn’t want to know, but because I refused to bring them into my tortured world.
I did what I could to self-preserve. I tried to avoid these kids. I would take stairs between classes that I knew they didn’t take. I would come to school through different doors, and I began to limit my interactions to those kids who were more like me… ostracized. Band members, geeks, unattractive kids, kids with good hearts.
I soon found myself. I became a people pleaser. I did whatever it took (within limits, of course), to be accepted. I found that I needed to focus on making a career that I knew later I could throw in these kids faces. So, I hunkered down with my new-found friends who thought I was fun, funny, smart, and had a clue as to what was really important, and in my last
her?
ruled and the one who was prom queen had made sure I was the one wearing
the clothes from TG and Y when they did the fashion show…I went to a
class reunion hoping that someone would be leading her in on leash…That
the years of dippity doo had gone straight to her brain and nothing worked
everything sagged and the world had dropped something akin to pidgeon doo
on everything she had hoped and dreamed of…. But I got over it… Years
passed and when I actually went to a reunion she could have been lead in on
a leash and I was sad… I needed a little more good honest hate you till I
die kind of attitude to get me through the rest of life … What am I going
to do… Twenty years of hoping to show her how I had out shined and I’ll be
damned if I hadn’t done it and neither one of us cared… Who knew…
Then there were the cheerleaders so little, cute and perky while I was tall and gangly.
However, years pass, and as I discover at high school reunions – those cute little cheerleaders are not so cute as chubby little ladies – though still perky. Strangely, the mohair girls so full of themselves now confess they too were scared and insecure
The Bullies
Not all bullies in high school were 230 pounds and gave a mean purple nurple. Some wore pink and smelled like heaven-on-earth .But whether they were petite and wiley or large and menacing…bullies were the curse of high school. If you’ve ever had your head in the toilet or been publicly humiliated for wearing the wrong color shoes…you know all about the power of the bully.
They were even worse when their friends were around. Somehow humiliation is even more satisfying when you have an audience. Power in numbers, That’s precisely how they gained fearful control over their victims.. You can look back now with high school a safe distance away and say they must have had personality disorders or a dysfunctional family. Sounds good now doesn’t it? But in high school it was hard to have any empathy for the people who made your life a living hell. And if you felt bad for the people they stalked, you were powerless. Bullies don’t take kindly to rightful indignation.
It’s hard to say who were feared the most…the big lugs who could break your neck or the mean girls who could break your spirit. They were a force to be reckoned with. Has this new world of politcal correctness and diversity changed the bully-victim cycle. Hell no .It’s getting worse. And now there’s U-Tube and IM’s to make it more public and even more humiliating.
Tell us your bully stories.
REUNIONS
Ok big shot. You put high school behind you and become tremendously successful and have a life that Donald Trump would envy. You have the spouse that causes a fair amount of rubber-necking and your kids/pets are stellar. Good for you. Because one day there will be a letter in your mailbox that will bring you to your knees. It will look innocent enough. But we guarantee that this one will stop you dead in your tracks.Runners Up
She just seemed to know she was getting the tiara Didn’t she? That oh-my-god expression and teary-eyed reaction was all put on. That slow motion walk to stand up near the quarterback was as deliberate as a bitch slap in prison. She had some nerve. You should have been the Queen. You’re the one who decorated the gym and made cookies for the pep club. You were the student council president and the girl that was nice to everyone. And you had to stand there and watch her walk the walk and take the prize. Excruciating. Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.
–ANONYMOUS
If you were a runner up things had to get ugly. After all you put yourself out there and you were publicly rejected. Brutal. Either you went on with your life and became an anchor woman or a courtroom diva ….or you simply put yourself in a position where you never had to compete again.
Running for Prom Queen begins way before high school . Tea parties and secrets, best friends and pink Barbie parties were the breeding ground for crowns and handsome princes.. We learn then that life isn’t always easy or fair. Our mothers taught us to invite everyone to our birthday party. But some mothers didn’t…and sometimes we were left out.
We quickly learn the art of pleasing to stay afloat in that world of parties and movies and sleep-overs. Sometimes we would give up our training bras to be invited. There were always some girls that were always invited. They didn’t have to do anything. They just accepted that they would be invited…and they were. These are the girls that are in Prom Queen Training. A ritual we were clueless about. But an invisible training camp that produced those icons of American high school life as carefully as the SAS.
The tiara takes a toll.
Bad Boys Bad Boys Whatcha Gonna Do?
God we love those bad boys. Mmm……mmm . Our fathers hated them, the school cliques scorned them and we would deny to the death that we were attracted. But the truth is we were. Those misunderstood greasers, J.D.’s, bad boys, playas, no matter what you called them. They were exciting and they were HOT, even when we didn’t know what that meant. That’s why bad boys traipse through life thrilling us in many, many ways.
Some, like Mick Jagger, never grow up. Some turn into the soccer coach. And them some, like in Grease, end up with Olivia Newton John. But those memories in high school of the secret trips to building behind the school , all that cigarette smoke, well that was good stuff. No one told us about second hand smoke then, so it was a first hand experience of tasting the forbidden fruit. And it was fantastic. Who didn’t have a secret crush on James Dean? That’s why he’s still a male icon.
The girls that were in that group usually didn’t have the same effects on guys. Most of the time the handsome jocks would turn away from the girls in the tight sweaters that hung around with the greasers. They were tough talking and hard living. Rizzo knew her place….but Sandy….well she just couldn’t resists a little Travolta on the side. Let’s face it — the bad boys have always had their following . That misunderstood rebel with dreamy eyes and the tight jeans…he’ll always have a following. .
We love the bad boys.
Prom Queens Forever
The Boys In The Band
Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture
