Was voted most popular (boy) and most handsome my senior year. Looking back now that seems like such a horrible tradition, granting such a title. It sure doesn’t make a rodent’s behind wrt your worth as a person and falsely implies others were less deserving. A medieval practice if you ask me.
i was just one of the nameless, faceless masses. there were a few friends i hung around with, but within a month after graduation we seemed to have gone our seperate ways. 33 years later, i have almost no contact beyond the random chance encounters typical to a small to mid sized city.
I used to feel the same way you did. It amazed me that people blamed the popular crowd for all the teasing/bullying. It was never the popular kids who did either at my school. It was done by those who were either in the middle of the pack or even slightly towards the unpopular end but still above the “misfits.” The kids in the top cliques were all above that kind of thing. However, I’ve talked to enough people over the years that I guess it’s just different depending on your school. At some schools, I understand it was the popular kids doing the mean things.
In the many years since high school, I’ve met a couple of my former high school classmates who said they remember me as “popular.” Odd because I never thought of myself that way. Looking back, I had a lot of friends and had at least a passing acquaintance with the top cliques. However, aside from getting invitations to some of their parties, I never hung around with them, and I certainly wasn’t part of their core groups. So I never thought of myself as being one of the popular ones. I guess it’s like being rich. You always think of the people above you as being “rich” but never you, yourself. While others less well off than you do think of you that way.
Not. Even. Close.
Looking back at my high school years, though, I’m glad I wasn’t.
2006 will mark 25 years since graduation and you couldn’t pay me to go to a reunion.
Popular (big P) means you are in the loop on what’s going on socially at school. You get invited to the cool parties. You have a good group of friends. You can get dates. Generally you are involved in the goings-on. People on the outside generally want to be like you.
popular (small p) means you are well liked. People know you. They say “hey…he’s a good guy”.
I never really considered myself Popular but I got along with just about everyone. I played a couple sports (track and hockey) which I wasn’t particularly good at but they provided a nice social outlet. And as one of my popular friends put it “at least I was doing SOMETHING” (presumably unlike those kids who spend all 4 years just going to class and never getting involved in anything.) I was kind of shy around girls but I guess I was good looking and funny enough that occassionally a girl would ask me out. I had a small group of really close friends I kept in touch with for years after graduating, and a large group of acquaintances. People from high school still go out of their way to say “hi” to me when they see me on the street, so that’s kind of nice. I really enjoyed my 5 and 10 yr reunion.
Basically, I guess like everyone else, I hated high school, but from the sound of other peoples posts, my experience was much better than most.
Actually…I’m really pissed off now that I didn’t ask more girls out in HS :mad:
Popularity = wealth at my high school, and I just couldn’t compete.
I rode a purple bike with a banana seat to school my freshman year; the other kids were driving BMWs. I never had the money to go on any of the cool ski trips or surf trips, or to buy the latest clothes, etc. sigh
But people weren’t mean to me. I was non-existant, basically. I had a few friends in a few different cliques - mostly the Drama Geeks, the Jesus Freaks and the random Sporto. I transfered to a “poorer” high school my junior year, and made GOBS of friends, but I never thought of myself as popular. We were all just a bunch of misfits who created a little “family” for ourselves, basically. It kept me out of trouble, but not in school. I dropped out at 16 …
That high school seems to be the exception, though. The hot-shot quarterbacks used to date the drama geeks, and the potheads were friends with the sportos, etc. I can’t explain it, but it was pretty cool.
I wasn’t popular but I wasn’t unpopular either. I had a small number of people I talked to but, for the most part, kept completely to myself and was rarely mocked for my weight, geekiness, or extracurricular activities and when I was, it was generally by others I gave it right back to.
I wasn’t popular because I didn’t wash my hair at least once every two weeks.
I was very popular, but did not date the right girls. I don’t mean girls with bad reputations, but just girls that weren’t accepted as part of the “in” group. Two girls I dated said they wouldn’t date me anymore because of our “differences”. One of those broke my heart.
The year after graduating from high school, I attended a basketball game there. Towards the end of the game I noticed this girl from my class. Her name was Margo Guy (even the name isn’t sexy) and she had a long face, wore little make-up, had a nothing hairdo and was tall and gaggly. That was when we were in high school. That night she was made-up, had a stylish hairdo and a body to die for. The game ended and I waited for her to pass by. She came towards me, stuck her nose in the air and paid no attention to me. I thought “Well, I guess I deserved that.” I believe Margo married very well and she has never attended any class reunion. I would imagine she’d think that ending up living in rural Mississippi is good enough for me.
In college I broke up with a girl in a way that was no credit to me and not any of her fault. We went our separate ways, but it always bothered me. Then a year ago I found out where she was. Jane is married to someone at the Livermore National Laboratory in California. Without any trouble she could find out where I am and again she probably would say “God, I could have ended up in rural Mississippi.” None of that bothers me in the least. I’m happy as hell for Margo and Jane as well as those other two girls (if they are happy).
What does it matter, what happened in high school, college or afterwards as long as you are happy now? I’m happy and also like to know that other people who I’ve shared life with are also happy. I know one that isn’t so happy through no fault of mine and it breaks my heart.
Things steadily got better for me during my school days, going from being bullied in elementary school, to a loser in jr. high, to a face in the crowd through much of high school, to actually kind of popular when I graduated. Basically, I did a variety of things (including sports) rather than sticking with just one group, and ended up getting acquainted with members of just about every different clique. So while I wasn’t actually a part of any social group, by the end of four years everyone knew who I was. Looking back, I may have had just the right blend of easy-goingness and antisocialness, since I got along pretty well with people who were into different stuff, but always stuck with doing my own thing.
Think of it as…anthropology. Or sociology. Our high school experiences have a profound effect on us, sometimes lasting for years or even our entire lives. The heirarchies in schools are interesting and, as we have seen already, differ from school to school. I think I began thinking about it because my 20-year reunion is coming up soon (my husband’s was last summer) and again, if I wish to attend, I must come face to face with the questions that linger: why was school the way it was? Why did people act the way they did? Can we overcome this at this remove, and connect as people?
Clearly, some of you folks have been able to. And clearly, some have not. I just think it’s interesting.
I think that a lot of people who describe themselves as “losers” and hated the popular folks never really looked at what they could do to change their situation. Did they ever throw a party or invite people over to hang out? Did they get involved in any activities? Did they ever ask any girls out? Did they ever just show up to a party (an open one, not someones private gettogether)?
Granted there were always some people who were just dickheads or bitches but I think most people want the same things - to be liked and accepted by their peers.
Huh. That’s easy for you to say. I wasn’t allowed to receive phone calls from anyone after 9 (which makes sense). I wasn’t ever allowed to receive phone calls from any boys. I wasn’t allowed to have any white kids over my house, only Indians. I wasn’t allowed to go to any parties, or any dances. I was strongly encouraged to join only “Indian” organizations. I was pushed to join the tennis team because it was 90 % Indian, same with the chess club. It’s not always our fault, when I lived under my parents’ roof I had to follow their rules.I wasn’t allowed to go to my prom, which I think I still have a faint resentment for.
I had a brief fling with unpopularity when puberty caused me to gain a massive amount of weight. Fat kids are bully-magnets, but most of you already knew that. I had a couple years of being bullied physically by guys and being the object of scorn and derision from girls.
After I got rid of the weight, I became a rather handsome young man. The guys stopped physically bullying me, though I think throwing one of them down a stairwell had more to do with that than my improved appearance did. The girls suddenly became a lot nicer to me, too. No matter what platitudes may be mouthed about it being “what’s on the inside that counts” it is indisputable that being perceived as handsome will get you farther than being thought of as ugly.
In retrospect, it was a sad situation for all concerned. The boys who were bullying me had some severe issues of their own. Several of them are in prison, or have done time, one of them died by drunkenly choking on his own vomit at age 43 last November. The girls couldn’t have felt too good about themselves, either, to feel the need to search for validation in an ongoing game of taunt the fat guy. Several of them went on to have unhappy lives, too. The one who treated me the worst was date-raped by one of the captains of the football team. She was a cheerleader and they were both on the “A List” of popular kids.
Suffice it to say, I never became one of the “popular” people, but I was very happy to move into a group where I was left alone by those who were.
This is why I am pretty sure I shall not be attending the 25th reunion of my graduating class in the summer.
Between 4th grade and the end of junior high I was the antithesis of popular. I was as well-known as the popular kids by virtue of kids telling stories about this weird creepy kid AHunter3 and what he did or said and who has the misfortune of having him in the same classroom. Apparently I fascinated the hell out of them, like an exceptionally scuttly and alien-looking bug from under a rock. Kids I’d never seen before would be brought over at the elbows of kids I only vaguely recalled, to be shown off to them. (It was all somewhat mutual; I was lonely and didn’t like being picked on but I didn’t like most other kids any better than they liked me, and I was actively contemptuous of them and disgusted with them and I’m sure it showed).
Less so in high school but I was socially inexperienced because of the above, plus I had the carry-over reputation, so still definitely not popular.
My experience was a little different. I did not self-identify as a “loser,” but I did not exactly have close friendships, either. I wasn’t bad looking, I did a lot of activities (albeit of the geeky kind), and at least looked people in the eye when I talked to them.
I just did not like parties, did not want ot date, and wicked Osgood-Schlatters as a teenager made sports a total impossibility. I was a competent sprinter as a kid, so this really sucked. I see now that some treatment might have been possible, but I was unaware of this at the time.
It’s not that I was some raging nonconformist. I just didn’t really like to partake in the usual activities with the popular kids, which included mostly binge drinking and occasionally taking advantage of inebriated women. Naturally, they hated me for “thinking I was too good for them.”
Yeah, I suppose I could have changed my behavior. I could have tried to go to a party or two, fingered some drunk freshman, and god forbid, started dating. But I don’t think it would have been too much trouble for the a-list kids to just live and let live. I didn’t try to get in their way, and would have really appreciated the same in return.
The truth is, most of them were nice folks. I had no problem relating to them individually in a positive way. I occasionally liked to work on homework with people, just because even a loner like me enjoys company from time to time. En masse, the situation was very different. Decent kids do some terrible stuff in groups. Kids who wanted to hang on to their popularity were perhaps the worst, at least in my experience. So even though I liked some of them, I could never trust them, and to this day, I have a hard time trusting people who exhibit “popular” behaviors.
Interestingly, I found college to be more “high school” than high school. My college had a big Greek system. Pretty much half of the school were in some kind of fraternity or sorority. Basically freshmen year, everyone lives on a freshman hall. There is tremendous pressure to join a house so that god-forbid you don’t become a GDI (God Damn Independent). Once “rush” is complete, the hall basically split by fraternity or GDI groups. Basically by sophomore year, you litterally were branded (in a marketing sense, not the hot piece of iron sense although some houses do that) by your living arangement - fraternity (and then the various levels of frat coolness), off campus housing, on campus upper class house.
Now you might say “so what? Just do whatever and who cares.” Maybe that’s the right attitude. But at a school like mine, if you don’t join a fraternity (I pledged sophomore year) you feel like you are missing a big part of college life. especially since there are few bars and most of the parties center around the houses. Usually by junior year though, people tend to settle down - many move off campus anyway or get settled with who their real friends are.
I did learn a couple of things though:
-If you have a good network of friends, “labels” - be they frat letters or varsity jackets don’t matter
-Most people aren’t as cool as they appear once you get to know them. A friend of mine pointed out that we were all there to be engineers, accountants and finance people. It wasn’t like anyone was going to be Kid Rock.
-The cool guys are doing the same things as the dorks - getting drunk, playing cards, watching tv, and trying to hook up with girls.
-That “cool” guy who acts like an asshole - odds are his friends also think he’s an asshole.
-Those guys who throws the big parties all the time? 90% of their “friends” are only there because there’s girls, beer or weed. But it doesn’t hurt to know a few guys like that.
-Respect needs to be earned - I’m not saying go around and kick everyone’s ass (because you can’t). But a little bit of showing people you CAN be a dick if pushed can go a long way. Even just showing up to play is good.
-Try to relax - Most of that shit isn’t really important.
-Don’t be an asshole - most people don’t really like it.
When I was in 7th grade a new kid came to town. He was little and skinny and had two great big front teeth. He looked like Bugs Bunny. We all called him “Buck.” Kids can be so mean. He has been dead for over 20 years no so I guess running a doctored picture won’t hurt anything.
Anyway, he was a poor student. He spent study periods asleep with his head on his arms on the desk so that the next class he had a big red spot in the middle of his forehead. One teacher, named Nettie Woolman, used to take him out in the coat room regularly with a yard stick and we would hear the whack, whack, whack of the stick. Corporal punishment wasn’t looked on as assault at the, although that’s what it was.
This continued on into high school. His poor scholarship caught up with him and when we went to to 12th grade he was held back in 11th.
Our class didn’t have a class reunion until our 20th and he showed up. He had lost the teeth and replaced them with dentures and everyone remarked on how changed he was. He was just one of the group who had shared school experiences. In fact, when the MC asked what teacher had the most effect on us he sang out, “Nettie Woolman!” Everyone shared in his laughter. Not one soul ever mentioned that he hadn’t graduated with us and in fact most of us had forgotten it.
Things change in 20 years. People change, or at least some of them do. Although there is one guy who hasn’t, having been in high school and is today some name that I can’t think of but it rhyms with quick, or trick, or wick or something like that. Give us a report on your reunion.
My high school was so large that it had multiple social groups, and if you were in one, you hardly ever saw people in the others - much less notice or care what they thought of you.
I had my group of friends, and I guess within that setting I was popular enough - we were all arty, geeky stoners, and we had lots of arty geeky stoner fun together.
I was vaguely aware that other groups existed - jocks and cheerleader types; punks; metalheads; preppies; drama and band types … but our interaction with them was limited to getting or giving pot and acid. Otherwise, we all got along okay, each within his or her own little tribe.
I can remember being really unpopular in grade school, so by comparison high school was much better.
As for the definition of “popular”: it was my impression that some of the little teen tribes were pretty hierarchical, with a strict “pecking order” - so that some were at the top (the popular), and some were at the bottom (the unpopular).
Our little group was pretty egalitarian, or at least we thought we were. There was I think one ironclad measure of social differentiation: and that was, the rule was that if you had drugs, you had to share them with everyone. Those who broke this rule were looked down upon - the worst behaviour was to smoke a joint someone was passing around, and then deliberately go elsewhere and smoke your own joint. If you got known for that, you could be in for some serious teasing/disapproval.
:eek:
Lets hope you are “popular” now!
Me? I was terribly popular in grade school! I got to play both “Easter Rabbit” and “Santa Clause” in the school play!
Unfortunatly, that was the pinnacle of my success. 
Its been a rather painfull descent into mediocrity and unpopularity since.
“Loser” during High school. Don’t think I could have gotten a date if I tried. (but did end up banging a hottie from across town and bringing her to the prom - completely unheard of at my school)
College- nothing. Could have passed as wall paper. I almost cry at the missed opportunity.
Had one brief moment of shining glory when I won the local dart championship 5 consecutive times. Was almost kind of “cool” there for a while in that small town. But nobody really cares.