@Oct
"However, my senior year of High School has been very been me waiting with high hopes and impatient to finally, leave small town America."

This one confused me most.

"Last year in high school, I began to reflect on my high school experience..."

So, were you a senior last year? Good God, three quarters of the way through freshman year of college and you're obsessing about high school? In college you should be doing three things and three things only: studying, partying, developing social skills. Also procrastinating, but let's leave that aside for now.

Apart from a few close friends if you're lucky (I was), high school relationships age like milk. Nothing you did there matters anymore. Go out and make real memories and get started on becoming the person you'll be as an adult. Navel gazing over how the lunch tables were so classist at your high school is wasting precious moments of the most consistently fun time of your life.

Invictus, didn't you spend time interning for the comical theatrical company we in Europe refer to as the United States Congress? ;-) How was that?

I interned at a Congressman's district office. When I was in Washington it was with a think tank/advocacy group. Both were enlightening in good and also depressing ways and letters of rec from those jobs helped me get into my first choice law school. I don't see why my attempts to rise above my inherent mediocrity should be made fun of. Or how it relates to my points above.

I was making fun of the US Congress and not of your internship there. I think it's a valuable experience for a young person, much more so than many other endeavors from which he can choose.

"I interned at a Congressman's district office. "

In other words, Invictus was a Federal sex toy...

Lol Federal sex toy.

Seriously though, what's a congressman's district office? Is it different than his office? Is it the office in his actual district?

@redhouse

Congressmen have an office in DC and an office in the district they serve.

Makes sense. So Invictus, how was that? And what did you learn in that office, and in the think tank? I'm genuinely curious. This is a lot more interesting than airborne blathering about being a Scot Korean farmer in Nebraska.

Invicus worked in the congressional district "office" that they rented - it was a darkened booth in the back of "Gaping Holes Fantasy and Video"

"Through even being on the top part of this vain little society didn't make my life better."

Spoken like a true privileged class person. You don't even know how good you have it. For a year I went to a high school much like yours in rural WI, and the WFC as you call it made it a point to shit all over me on a regular basis. I didn't have much going for me, after all I was:

1) a city boy
2) well spoken
3) possessing no belt buckles larger than my forehead
4) coming from a family of relatively modest means (my parents both had PhD's, but didn't make a whole lot of money)
5) a bit of a loudmouth (surprised, anybody?)

Those people are scum and I commend you for breaking apart from the mold to any degree. At your age that is something fairly exceptional. I still check out that town driving through from time to time. It's always nice to see somebody who used to hate me working a shitty job. Unfortunately, most of them are lined up to inherit daddy's farm, so they can continue the cycle with the next generation of privileged little assholes.

@YJ and like-minded fools....interesting how you, in criticizing the youth that -- as is natural -- identified you as an outsider and picked on you in school; in criticizing them, you are *exactly* you they are, belittling their cultural dress, their cultural language, etc...the very things they criticized you for. Hypocrite.

What you experienced in normal human behavior...in fact, it is normal *animal* behavior, to select the different and the weak and attack them. Ever hear of the "runt of the litter"...you were the social runt, and what took place was a normal evolutionary event - you were made an outcast.

You will suggest, "But we are human, intelligent, we can overcome with intelligence..." as you slander them in the same mindset that they attacked you...

@krells - I view his verbal assault as justice and we all DEMAND JUSTICE. But seriously. This is Biblical justice at the personal level. "Judge not lest ye be judged. For by what measure ye meet, it shall be met unto you." Seems he is just dishing back the judgement at the same level but without the physical retribution that is do his high school assailants.

I am sort of in the same boat. Despite being in Greater Cincinnati, West Chester was a farming community when I grew up so. So there were farm boys in one clique, and the doctors and lawyers kids (it was just getting it's first subdivisions that far out and they were all doctors and lawyers) in another. I didn't fit either as I grew up in a 160 year old house (like the farm boys) and didn't have the rich daddy money of being a doctor or lawyer brat. But I also didn't work on a farm and have my own little patch of weed growing out back and a dad who bought beer for me, so I didn't fit in there. The only thing high school was good for was getting laid (chicks dig a guy who can triple-tongue a brass instrument) and getting an education so I could escape the middle middle-class life and not want to kill myself.

Justice? How? His attackers aren't here to hear his name-calling. they are still winning, in fact, evidenced by the burning anger inside him that comes out to this day. Not only do they win because he is still angry over the actions of children, but they win because he has become them...name calling, belittling, etc.

It's a justice within his mind if it gives him some amount of satisfaction to know he escaped that environment and bettered himself. After all, family farms are failing everyday as the megafarms put them out of business. Those kids he went to school with may not have a family farm to inheret down the road.

"Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer.
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them;"

#YJwasbulliedbykrellininhighschool

I find it amazing that a bunch of grown men are still holding grudges from high school. Why should it matter at all that some 16 year olds were dicks to you decades ago? 16 year olds are always dicks. You were one. I was one. We move on. This thread has made me think of high school more than I have since graduation, and I still have about five months left at my childhood home before I move to the city and state my law school's in.

Do you still hate the boy who pushed you in kindergarten too?

For me, I'm just glad I escaped high school with my sanity. Most of those losers from the farmboy click have turned into drunken potheads who couldn't hold down a job except the one daddy gave them on his farm, and the posh tossers have gone onto posh careers on their daddy's money and name (a couple taking over their father's law or medical practices afetr following daddy through law or med school). And one of our class is infamous for going to jail as the owner of Berkeley Nutraceuticals (Enzyte/Smiling Bob manufacturer) for mail fraud and credit card fraud. He is still rotting behind bars, I believe.

its funny some fraud is prosecuted and some isnt.

Invictus -- agreed. Ever meet someone that still hates someone they have no contact with, and can never "get back at" other than by slandering them to others. It's an open, unhealable wound. Generally makes for a miserable human being...

Draugnar, "following daddy through law or med school" isn't exactly easy. Especially med school. You just sound like a bitter loser who's still jealous about not being a cool guy in high school. It's pathetic.

I didn't say it was, but it is made easier when daddy was an alum at the school. But yes, they still have to get the grades to get the law or medical degree. I agree. And I generally got along with them better than the farm boys because I was in the prep kids advanced classes. I may not have driven their brand new Mustangs or Cougars (had to live with a 76 Olds Custom Cruiser station wagon in 1982-85 when the engine gave out at 180K), but I could at least use my brain and not wander around the halls in a perpetual doobie fog or hung over.

The ones I got along best with were the other band, math, and military history geeks like me. There were a few of us. And most of us have gone on to some moderate success in our fields of choice. My best friend from high school is now a studio guitarist who has played with a whole variety of stars and recorded on movie soundtracks. Another close friend was a professor of music at FIU for a while before deciding to play mom full time and has recently started a Montessori type school in Florida now that her kids are of school age.

I went to High School in a suburb of Phoenixwith a very narrow income range. The difference between "poor" kids and "rich" kids (which really refers to their parent's income, obviously) was probably not greater than a factor of 2. So in todays money (I have no clue what the numbers were then), say a middleclass family with two working parents, makes about $100k, I bet there were some families that made $75k (not poor by anyones standards) and some that made $150k (not rich by anyones standards) but that's probably the extent of the range (again, in today's money).

So the divisions were not economic, but style or interest. We had punks, metal/rockers, new wavers, stoners, jocks and preppys. And there was plenty of crossover between the groups. The jocks weren't stereotypical "dumb jocks", they were all in the College prep classes, because the all had hopes of going on to college athletics. They were all friendly with everyone, some of them liked metal, some like top 40, so there was that music cross over too. Everyone bought drugs from the stoners, so they were well liked. A lot of the metal heads and punks were in local bands that would play at the parties thrown by the preppies and the jocks, so we were popular with them (that's where I fit in. I was in metal bands all through Jr High and High School, and a few years after).

I graduated in a class of 1000 from a school with 3000 students in 3 grades (9th graders went to Jr High at the time, so it ws just 10-12) and there just wasn't any division based on anything other than your individual personality. If you were cool, then you were cool with everyone. If you were a dick, then everyone hated you. But I had a good time in HS. Then I went on college, and had a good time there too. Maybe I was lucky to grow up in the suburbs in a relatively new community where there wasn't 100+ years of history creating those divides. I bet no family at the time lived in a house older than about 15 years, from the particular neighborhoods that fed into my high school.

Yeah, farming communities on the edge of older big cities like Cinci ha dhomes from over 150 years old to brand new as urban sprawl was sending the boomers getting busy with families out to the urban areas as the suburbs of the day filled up. So there was a big income difference between the farmer who had been there all his life trying to scrape buy (after you pay for all those pieces of farm equipment, you don't makea lot) and the boomer making a hell of a lot of money as an attorney or doctor. It produced a lot of "turf wars" in my school at the time. Preps, jocks, and heads... Then there were us geeks. :-)

Ok, you want some honesty, here you go.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, I was put, by my mother, into a scholarship exam for one of the most prestigious schools in the entire country. She was a very educated woman and valued education very much. I valued education too, but I didn’t want this. I wanted to be with my friends, from whom I would have to be parted as they were at the comprehensive school down the road.
I did everything I could do to mess up the exam. Rice peashooters in the playground, pencils retrieved from the back of the radiators flying through the exam room. Anything and everything . . . but . . . I achieved 6 years’ free tuition, uniform, books, etc. Why? Because I can’t see a problem without trying to solve it. I messed up.
However, I do remember the question I could not possibly answer started with, “If you were in Dodecaland . . . “ (I had never heard of bases in primary school.)
Ok, my mum must have been very happy to hear I’d passed. That was her goal before she died. However, she heard me crying uncontrollably in my room. She died several days later.
Always felt bad about that. Nothing you can change, unfortunately.
You want honesty; sometimes you get honesty. Not always a good idea.

No, Special K, I was not the runt (quite the opposite, as the morons who actually tried to get physical found out). I was just different, and I hadn't been raised to even notice or care about social class. It was a pretty confusing time.

I spent most of my HS years in a much larger city, where I fit in tolerably well and had friends in most social circles, yes, even the kids from more well-to-do families.

But that one year in that shitwater town opened my eyes to the way rich rural kids are brought up. Its hilarious that you think criticizing intolerance is in fact intolerance in its own right. There is a very big difference between smirking to myself when I see some of them have landed jobs like yours (at best), and actively going out of my way to make them feel like shit.

Yeah, I know, its high school, and high school is pretty hellish. But small town conformist hell is a very special kind. Don't worry though, I'm sure you fit right in, and your kids will too.

I also love how you try to write the whole thing off as normal animal behavior, as if that's all we should be aspiring to. Fear the different: Xenophobia in children is just so lovely.

haha bo_sox, it's probably true, or somebody quite like him.

@Draug while I thank you for understanding, I don't really want anybody's farm to fail. I totally agree it's somewhat petty to feel a bit of quiet satisfaction when I see where some particular assholes ended up.

@Invictus You are right. It doesn't. I certainly hope I haven't given the impression I spend any large amount of time thinking about this. As I said it was a brief time there, but it left a real impression on me, and OP really struck a chord with my own personal experiences.

@YJ - I didn't say you wished them ill will (the farm to fail) but you certainly wouldn't be upset by it on some level, now would you?