I would be fascinated to hear from you (and from other members of this list) an account of "something more clever than Susan H's priorities as to what counted in life." --CGE
On 6/12/11 3:44 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> Well, here's the deal: I'd have none of that crap either. When I was in grade
> school, I had to have my front baby teeth removed leaving me with one big
> adult tooth, three missing teeth, and then braces. Dad lovingly called me
> "chopper one." On top of that, my mother had trained to be a beautician, so
> she cut our hair in these old 60s styles in order to save money.
>
> I was friends with the nerds, the people considered ugly and brainy. In 7th
> grade, the teeth straightened out and all of a sudden I was considered worthy
> of admittance to the "in group." What I observed there was a lot of shallow,
> gossipy, mean people who, I guess, considered themselves something special:
> they came from wealth or their parents were engineers, doctors, lawyers,
> C-level execs. Some where children of laborers, low-level white collar workers
> like me. The ticket to admittance was appearance and being good at school, so
> class origin wasn't a barrier - as long as you had intelligence and good
> looks, you could get in. Whereas you only had to have class origin to get in
> for those who weren't that bright and/or weren't considered good looking.
> Sports was the avenue for boys.
>
> I spent the rest of high school irritated with their behavior, at how mean to
> people they were, and trying to challenge the gossipy, shallow meanness by
> being friends with everyone whether they were nerds, stoners, jocks, geeks,
> farmers, whatever.
>
> I also spent most of that time eager to get the hell out of the idiocy of
> small town life, convinced that it could only get better in a big city where
> diversity and freedom of anonymity created pockets of resistance to the
> gossipy, mean, snooty shallowness of the "in" crowd. I never found that,
> natch. I sure as shit didn't find it on the left.
>
> I remember getting an invite to my 10th year reunion. One of the meannest
> women among this crowd was organizing it. She'd gotten pregnant while at
> William and Mary, dropped out and had become a dental hygienist. She wanted us
> to tell her all about ourselves: did we still have all our hair, teeth, good
> looks? Had we grown pot bellies, flabby arms?
>
> I declined. Once I got out of that town, I've never been back. Too bad I can't
> consistently find, on this list, something more clever than Susan H's
> priorities as to what counted in life.
>
> shag
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk