Boo! I'm back. Happy (late) Halloween! How was your October? Mine was stressful.

Anyway, let's get on to the rant because it's one you guys have been requesting forever and I'm just now getting around to (because I'm a lazy bitch and time flies when you have five preps a day): The Popular Crowd

It seems like almost every story (still) has the "popular crowd" or "in kids" as antagonists in the story and I feel like you guys know how I feel about cliques. Don't like 'em. So today I thought why don't we talk about these popular crowds and maybe we can come up with some ways to twist up the regular "mean girls", "plastics", "gods walking amongst mere mortals".

I guess before we do that, I should probably give you some of my high school background, so you know what my school was like and where I'm coming from. If you went to a larger school or one with a different dynamic, by all means, leave your experience in the comments. I'm telling you, your experiences are valuable research for people whether or not you think they are. You have valuable information. Be a dear and share it.

So I graduated in a class of 100 students (there were probably around 1300 kids in the entire school, Kindergarten through seniors) in a small town where I was related to probably half of the district. My dad was the high school football and basketball coach (which meant everyone knew him, because in small schools in the South, sports are usually a pretty big deal).

My school used to have those "who's who" awards, like "most likely to succeed", "best hair", "best laugh", "funniest", "craziest" and all that. Well, we used to have one that was "All School Favorite" and freshman through seniors got to vote for the two seniors (boy and girl) they thought were the "best". Like it was, in a way, an award for the most popular person (because you had to know a lot of people to get the votes, even though we didn't campaign. They literally gave us a slip of paper and you just wrote down whoever you thought deserved it). And the people that always won were the ones that had lots of friends because they were nice, they were funny, they worked hard, they were involved in activities, they contributed to the community. They weren't always the best looking or the richest or the meanest. They were literally the most popular because people genuinely liked them.

They had to ban that award (because I guess everyone gets a trophy now, but we didn't back then. We literally handed out awards for being popular. Shame on us (that's sarcasm)). Anyway, so our senior year, my best friend was voted "All School Favorite Male". And everyone was super surprised that I wasn't the favorite female, but I was painfully shy (and funniest and most talented) and a total bitch, and the girl who got it totally deserved it. She was involved in her church, she sang in the choir, she tutored. She ended up graduating as Speech Pathologist. So go Bailey!

Anyway, so I wanted to break down the "popular" crowd into a more interesting dynamic. What if we take the criteria for this "All School Favorite" award and put that into our popular crowds? I think it would make for a more entertaining dynamic if these popular crowds weren't rich and bitchy. So let's break it down and generate ideas!

1. Nice

This was always the most important factor in voting for "All School Favorite" for us, the entire time I was in high school. Because everyone has this notion that if the voting is anonymous, there is no way to rig the system, and it's our one chance to speak up about our social hierarchy, they we want the nicest person to win. You don't call someone who is a complete jerk to you your favorite person. It's not sane. So let's think about that, because sometimes even being nice is a conflict.

My best friend is the nicest guy in the world. Seriously. If you can't get along with him, you're the jerk. It's that simple. He will go out of his way to help you and he's always been like that. He was always giving people rides when he could. He'd help people with his homework. He had this problem with telling people no. And sometimes not being able to tell people no is a huge problem.

He would wear himself out trying to help anyone and everyone, which we'll cover more in the other two point (school and community involvement). When you're trying to balance work, school, sports, and then a bunch of extracurriculars on the list, it's a rough time. I've told you before how neither of really slept much at all in high school and it was really because we had so much to do (and we thought we were busy then. HA!)

So sometimes we see a "nice" character as being boring, but really, being nice is a conflict in and of itself. Because when you're nice, people expect you to always be available. When you're nice, people open up to you and tell you're their secrets and then you have to responsible for someone else's drama on top of your own (because we all have drama). When you're nice, you usually have to be willing to help which leaves you with next to no personal time to do the things you like or want to do. And sometimes when you're nice, you have to deal with people you don't like while still being civil to them (which is called being an adult, and it can be a bitch, I'll admit). So nice doesn't have to equate to boring or shallow. Nice can be a really interesting character flaw. Much better than the "Queen Bee Bitch".

Bailey was the nicest girl ever. Seriously. She was one of those people that was so nice you wanted to believe it was fake, but you knew it wasn't. Never heard her say a bad word about anyone in my whole life (and I've known the girl since Kindergarten). People like that. They respect that.

2. Involved in school

I went to a small school in a small community, so school involvement was almost a necessary part of the culture. Maybe that's why we didn't really have cliques or anything? Because I was involved with the arts (like drama, choir, actual art), business (accounting, desktop publishing, management, the works), sports (like football, basketball, baseball, track, cross country), academics, agriculture, world languages, community service, PTA, student council. You name it, my best friend and/or I had a hand in it, as did most people.

When we graduated, my best friend and I were the most decorated seniors, because we did so much crap. Bailey was third, simply because she didn't have all the track medals. But no one graduated without at least one extracurricular activity. And we all mixed. If you liked sports, you could like drama too. And this was before High School Musical, even. If you were into agriculture, you could also totally be into world languages. There wasn't one things that you had to fit into. You could do anything and everything you wanted.

And the most "popular" kids (I hate that word) were involved in everything. Seriously, my best friend wasn't even part of some clubs, but he helped them out. Sometimes he would come accompany the choir on piano if we didn't have our usual pianist. He helped out at the fair every year with the FFA bunch. Any time the PTA would ask him to help with a fundraiser he would. He got elected to student council (funny story) and even though he didn't want to do it, he still made an attempt to be a good treasurer (he was super upset when he realized he wasn't allowed to actually handle money, just the ledgers). We used to spend time in the art room helping every club imaginable make decorations or auction items for fundraisers or whatever.

Obviously he was super involved in sports. He played every sport our school offered guys (except soccer, because it conflicted with baseball and track). And he was good. But he also supported the band when he could (honestly, it was extremely hard for him, because those schedules were notorious for conflicting). He did a little bit of everything in school. And he did it to the best of his ability, because he was nice (and sometimes I was the one who roped him in to doing it and you can't say no to me. I'm annoying).

Bailey was super involved in academics. She was on the quizbowl team, the geography bowl team, the math league. She did KMO. She was gifted and talented. But she was also a member of the band and she played volleyball for a while. Awesome girl. Always busy, never complained.

3. Involved in community

This goes with the other one, especially in a small area, but we did a lot of community service too. Seriously, I have an entire chapter dedicated the charities and fundraisers we were involved in during high school. It goes back to my best friend not being able to say no. We were at bake sales. We were at charity dinners. Usually we were representatives of the athletic department in the community (because why wouldn't the coach send his daughter and his best player?). But occasionally we would end up at events by request of others.

Like, our boss's wife had cancer and they had a fundraiser for her and guess who got put in charge of the silent auction? You thought I was going to say my best friend but no. Actually that one was me. But of course he had to help (side note, who puts a sixteen year old and her seventeen year old best friend n charge of the most profitable part of a fundraiser?). Which kind of leads me to an important tangent, a lot of "popular" people are typically responsible too. You have to be responsible to be trusted with so much.

And for two years my best friend coached Pee Wee football and he hated it so much (but he can't say no, I love that about him). But I thought it was funny. And the kids loved him. They're actually playing for my dad right now and they keep repeating things my best friend told them that my dad actually taught my best friend. And he says it's like the weirdest déjà vu. It's adorable.

But yeah, community involvement is big. Bailey was super involved in her church. She did Sunday school with the kids. She also was a camp counselor at a summer camp (also run by her church, if I'm not mistaken).

So my point in this whole chapter is this: popular people don't have to be mean. It's really possible for someone to be nice and dependable and to be liked by the masses. And who says there has to be one popular crowd? My best friend was All School Favorite, but that didn't mean he ran the whole school. There were tons of people involved in tons of activities in and out of school. They were nice, responsible, and sometimes overworked. They don't always have to be rich. They don't have to be shallow. They can be likable. That doesn't make them a god. It just makes them a kid.

So that's it. My rant. If you had a different experience, please do share. Seriously. I'm super curious to know how other people feel about this. Because I work at a small school now and my students are just like this. Their most "popular" boy and girl are both star athletes, AP students, involved in many clubs. And they are genuinely nice people. So let me know if this hasn't been your experience. I want to know what other people have dealt with. Really, I want to know why this cliché of the well known people being evil is so prevalent. Definitely comment and help me figure that out.

I guess you guys want a funny story...hmm...I guess I can tell you about when my best friend coached Pee Wee Football. He was the head coach and an old friend (fun fact, he was actually my brother's best friend in high school/my former boyfriend (it wasn't weird, I swear. And we ended on good terms)) was his assistant and I was the manager/offensive coordinator/make sure no one kills anyone person. He wasn't allowed to cuss (obviously) to these seven and eight year olds. But he also wasn't the kind where they got rewarded for just showing up. He had these kids running drills, they were taught form, they were taught plays. It was legit.

And the other teams in the league were all coached by parents that were caught up in living vicariously through their kids. But my best friend's team always won because those kids were disciplined (they loved my best friend and the other guy for whatever reason and would beg their parents to let them practice after practice with them. It was adorably creepy). So the other parents were always mad because my best friend's team would always dominate, but he taught them to be so humble that they never bragged or anything about it (if they were caught being arrogant they had to sit out a game. He was rough on them. You don't talk big, you play big).

So the third year, the parents got together and decided he couldn't coach anymore. And he (gladly) agreed. But it was so funny to see him coaching little kids. And trying to use my dad's slogans in G rated terms. Like, he couldn't say "why don't you take me to a nice dinner before you fuck me like that". He had to say something little kid friendly like "If you mess this up one more time you will never get to eat pizza after a game ever again."

And instead of saying "You're about to get a foot in your ass", he had to say "If you walk one more time when we're supposed to be running, there will be no more juice boxes".

Even though it was inconvenient at the time, it's funny now.

But, again. Seriously. Leave your commentsbelow. I'd love to hear from you all. And hopefully you're all having a greatautumn so far! Hopefully we'll talk soon!b