My High School Caste System

Circa 1981, McDowell High School, Millcreek, PA.

Brains and Looks
Class presidents reside here, and prom kings and queens. They go to the best schools and become politicians, captains of industry, military brass, doctors. They live in the nicest neighborhoods and no one in your family knows anyone in theirs. They are generally successful and generous later in life, but never truly intersect with or understand the other castes.[1]

Just Brains
They discover vaccines, start technology companies, have stable, long relationships, and remain convinced that at least one really dumb thing is really true despite their exceptional smarts in everything else.

Just Looks
They're just like Just Brains except they have none and they remain convinced that nearly every dumb thing is really true despite the exceptional odds that they would be wrong once in a while. Both Just Brains and Just Looks don't know you exist unless you have considerable amounts of one or the other, in which case you're the object of ridicule or admiration, depending on what you have the most or least of.

Jocks
Sports, drinking and girls. In that order. Heavy jackets, big letters, wide shoulders, low brows, ever-present sidelong glances. Lots of alpha male posturing and elbows in the hallway. They tend to gravitate toward the Just Looks crowd, since, aside from their athletic ability and cult status, there is little else to distinguish them from that group.

Not Everyone Else
Quiet, invisible, anonymous. They have no name, they're just "not everyone else." They are never voted "most likely" to do or be anything, and generally they don't and aren't. They ride the bus to school. They don't have jackets with letters, and only enough looks and brains to wish they had more of both.

Outcasts
Everyone knows of them but doesn't know them. They are manipulated and bullied by one half the class, ignored by the other. They belong to no other group, have no friends, and disappear after graduation. They sometimes meet sad ends that we only learn of years later.

Dirt Bags
Music, drugs, and rebellion. In that order. Long hair, frayed jeans, bad grades, maximum amount of legal missed days; if they're over 18 they write their own absentee excuses. Antisocial, antiestablishment, anti-everything, but big hearts looking for a connection to other big hearts.
God bless Jon Flueger (Fleuger?), wherever you are. I reach the dirt bag in you.

So, where were you?

[1]
As a former acquaintance of mine said, these are the members of The Lucky Sperm Club.

There were of course many exceptions, variations, and subdivisions within this system, like the ROTC crowd, which overlapped a couple others. I'm sure there have been many studies on high school social structures, so no need to belabor the point here. Your school was certainly similar, you just used different words to describe it (unless you were home-schooled, then you are a group unto yourself; perhaps you were even spared some of the pain high school inflicts, though I suspect you've only met it in the workplace, as it festers everywhere, though violations of the rules have more severe consequences as you get older).

Of course, there are folks that think they are in one group or another, and they are really not, which can lead to social embarrassment or low self-esteem from always trying to fit someplace you don't belong, and never really finding where you do.

Finding the inner I'm Okay/You're Okay voice is the first step.

Started: 2012-03-20