We create these caste systems in our heads, I think. At least I do.
I went to elementary school in a district with K-8s only, no middle schools or junior highs. At ninth grade, hundreds of kids from the eight schools spread throughout the county would funnel into Watauga High School in Boone.
The hierarchy of elementary schools was thus (based entirely on my perceptions and opinions):
- Hardin Park. It was right there in the middle of Boone. Full of Appalachian State faculty’s kids, townies. They didn’t have to drive ten miles to the mall.
- Valle Crucis. They must’ve put something in the water because they raised some OH MY GOD TOTALLY CUTE boys, particularly Antoine (swoon) who played on my brother’s soccer team, the Strikers (fanning self).
- Blowing Rock. Rich-people town. The kids who went to Blowing Rock would be getting cars for their sixteenth birthdays, and not an ’83 Subaru GL station wagon that was concave on both sides and cultivating a serious case of rust, and you’ll share that with your siblings, you’re welcome.
- Parkway.
- Green Valley. Parkway and Green Valley were interchangeable. They were on the other side of the county, and I didn’t know anything about them. But they had to be better than…
- Cove Creek. That’s where I went. Ten miles west of Boone in tobacco country. The only reason Cove Creek was above numbers 7 and 8 was because we had a dope-ass gym, left over from the days when our elementary was a high school.
- Mabel.
- Bethel. Again, Mabel and Bethel were interchangeable. Both considered Total Bumfuck.
So imagine my confusion when my brother went off to WHS and promptly asked Melany Johnson, who had gone to Hardin Park, to the Homecoming dance.
I was like, whoa. Can you—I mean, can you do that?
It didn’t matter that my siblings and I were faculty brats and my mom was a—gasp!—Unitarian Universalist, so we probably had way more in common with Hardin Parkers than with the kids at Cove Creek. It still blew my little mind.
Which was then rendered FUBAR when Melany Johnson said yes.
Let me insert that, looking back, the Cove Creek kids were awesome—except the ones who told us we were going to hell because we weren’t members of Brushy Fork Baptist, they sucked—and I’m still friends with some of them today. I’m just trying to illustrate the way I created this everybody-OK–nearly-everybody-is-better-than-me paradigm.
Well, I still do that. The one I had unconsciously developed about my gym is “I can’t talk to people who are fitter than me”. Which means…everybody. Because everybody’s fitter than me.
But my caste system keeps getting wrecked because people at my gym keep commenting, and emailing, and coming up to me and saying, “I read your blog, and oh my gosh, we have so much in common!”
I love it.