Belonging

Anyone who survived high school in America can attest to the varied social castes that result from crowding hundreds of teens from diverse backgrounds into close proximity. My suburban high school was no exception.

The false Spring of late January 1972 had ended, plunging North Texas temps from low 70’s back down to the mid 30’s. Early morning high school parking lots were bustling with poorly experienced teen drivers competing on patches of ice against monstrous yellow school busses in a hurry to dislodge their loads and retire to the bus barn.

Four kids, having just returned to the school’s front parking lot from a local donut shop, sat in a car, passing around the final remnants of their second “doobie”. One of the two boys in the back seat produced an alligator clip from his keyring to secure the “roach” and smoke the last half inch because, at ten dollars per ounce, marijuana was too costly to waste.

The four considered themselves anti-establishment though the definition of “establishment” was flexible and tended to designate anyone not to their liking. One of the girls in the front seat produced a small bottle of yellow amphetamines, called “Smilies” which would later cancel their mid-morning amotivation factor, and provide the drive needed to finish the day.

The other female, a recent transplant from the West Coast, deftly slipped her bra out of the glovebox and discreetly donned it beneath her flannel shirt without ever showing a thing, much to the disappointment of the boys in the back seat. Going braless in my conservative high school was a strict no-no.

Only a hundred feet away, and seemingly oblivious to the scent of weed emanating from the car, the school’s assistant principle stood beside a row of pickup trucks, chatting amiably with a group of boys from the Future Farmers of America group. He was lusting over a hand-made Italian shotgun belonging to one of the students.

He aimed the shotgun carefully skyward, knowing full-well that it was loaded and not wishing to alarm any of the other students in the parking lot. At least three of the seven farm trucks in the tacitly designated parking spots contained rear window gun racks showcasing an assortment of shotguns and rifles. Nobody gave a second thought to those guns since the viral psychosis of random school shootings was still two decades in the future.

Much of the early morning action was limited to the parking lots because the school building was officially off limits to students until the first bell rang at 8:05. There were, however, exceptions. In one classroom, two serious young men faced off across a chess board with other chess club members watching. No girls were in the chess club.

Band members gained early access to the warm band hall where they congregated in shared comradery. The girls of the drill team met in a dressing room of the old gym dedicated to their practices — a place where they could share the latest gossip and coalesce as a clique.

Just across the courtyard, at the “boy’s” gym, the basketball team had wrapped up a rare early morning practice — punishment for losing a game to their cross-town rivals the previous Friday evening. Within that rowdy shower room of white teenage males — popping each other on the bare asses with wet towels as a rite of membership — there was a subset of three black teens whose athletic prowess had gained them entry to the elite circle.

Blacks had only attended the high school for the last few years since a federal mandate had closed their neighborhood high school and bussed them across town to ensure integration. The remainder of the black student body congregated just inside one of the school building’s hallways where coincidentally, every black student’s locker was grouped side-by-side.

Not surprisingly many of those black students were suspicious of their new forced surroundings and kept to themselves, belittling members of their group who mingled too readily with the white student body. Some even carried makeshift weapons in anticipation of racial violence. To say there was tension would be a gross understatement.

Those were only a few of the herds that dominated life in my high school. There were many others with memberships that varied from casual to ritualistic. I couldn’t wait to escape that nonsense even though I unthinkingly contributed to it. Little did I realize that the same foolishness would pervade and eventually prevail over the entire culture of my country.

Part of the blame lies with the opiate of social media which turned emotional herding into an art form. But another part lies much deeper within our shared social psyche. Western culture has traded the concept of empirical truth for a consensus-based notion of truth. The relativity of my-truth/your-truth, along with a false understanding of democracy have cross-bred and evolved to the notion that a 51% majority opinion constitutes “truth”.

The only remaining security lies in shedding our individuality and joining a group large enough to shout down all competition and establish its own “truth” as the ruling norm. Cancelling non-adherents has become the contemporary replacement of civil law. We threw off the constraints of social norms in a pursuit of individual freedoms, only to result in a culture where individuality is hearing the maddening peal of its death knell.

We have long surpassed the point of accepting a consistent moral definition of right and wrong and have now emerged at a point where we cannot even agree on the basics of science. We argue about subjects like the definition of a man or woman, what constitutes “life”, and whether or not mankind’s very existence is the cause of our aging planet’s path towards extinction.

Are there definitive answers? Let’s discuss that over coffee. Maybe we can even start our own herd. Who knows? Perhaps with the right social media marketing, we can become a viral success and grow to a size where we’re able to shun all those other Bozos who don’t think, act, and dress like us.

A meeting of great minds who think alike