What were group were you in at school? (A sociological question related to tiki culture)

Im asking people what they were at school. Say what? I mean, what group were you in the schoolyard social strata? Were you a geek/nerd, football jock, part of the 'popular' group etc.

Im asking this, as I think it would be interesting in getting some of the background as to how people came to be here.

I beleive that TCers are mainly from the nerd/loser/geek end of the spectrum (I am myself, I openly admit it). Why do I beleive this?

Well, tiki culture/polynesian pop isnt exactly mainstream (although Shag admitadly isnt doing too bad). But by and large, its not as popular as say Von Dutch has recently been, or any other similar brand or 'scene' such as say the hip hop 'scene'.

People into tiki arent here because they want to fit in with the majority of the population. We are comfortable within our own skin, and dont mind being considered a little odd. Hell, some of us revel in it. But we generally dont go out of our way to be shocking such as some gothics and punks may with piercings and offensive tats and so forth.

Therefore, TCers are more likely to be nerds/geeks etc as we were generally comfortable with our self identities at school, and did not place a great value on how others percieved us at school.

Thats what i reckon anyway. Based upon my own knowledge and experiences. How close to the mark did I come? Did I nail it, or am i just a lone muttering nerd? Looking forward to reading your responses!

I was definitely on the outside. Not of the popular group at all. My grades weren't good enough for me to say I was a geek/nerd. I was labeled a stoner and I think that was due to the music I listened to (vs. the substances I used or didn't use) and the cigarettes I smoked.

Yeh, there is also the stoners, losers, eccentric nutters, loners etc.You can also be nerdy in the obsessed Star Trek fan way, but not necessarily academically minded and thus not have good grades.

My group was a mix of nerds, weirdos, and losers. 2 of them were in the running for dux of the year, a few are the typical audio-visual/movie nerds. The fact some of us did debating didnt help (hey, some hot chicks in the year above us did it, and we got out of class regularly. Worth the maths debating jokes in my book :) ).

Interesting thread. I was in the 'Art Crowd' all through High School, definately nerdish for the first 2 years, but hung with the local toughs from my hood. Then I changed. 3rd year I started playing guitar in a hard rock band. Still hung with the thugs, but also the Cools, and Freaks. Was part of 3 distinct groups of friends. Many of whom I'm still in contact with. Never liked the drugs, was always a boozer, and cigarette fiend. As far as Tiki is concerned, My parents house was very 'Googie' and Googie and Tiki go hand in hand. Always liked Exotica Music, exotic foriegn music in general. Used to incorporate many Arabic and Oriental patterns in the music I wrote and performed. While I enjoy Drawing and Carving Tiki items, I don't limit myself. I'm very much into classical art forms and Classical Music. But love a bit of Metal and Punk too!

[ Edited by: CondorTiki 2005-10-12 21:04 ]

I was a skateboarder in high school and thus considered an outsider. If you didn't play team sports or waste time taking part in after-school activities you were definitely not part of the "cool-crowd." Our allies were the punks and the artsy kids (this was before people actually called them Goths) who suffered the same verbal abuse we did. But I never thought of any of my friends as geeks or nerds and to this day I still wouldn't say we were... we were just individuals who liked things beyond the mainstream. Besides I always liked the punk and goth girls more than the cheerleaders anyway! :)

On 2005-10-12 21:33, johntiki wrote:
Besides I always liked the punk and goth girls more than the cheerleaders anyway! :)

I hear that! :)

I was a straight A student, president of every club and the student body, a member of every drama production, on the swim team and the Homecoming Queen.

I never slept.

I'm still very tired.

3 of the "in" crowd cheerleaders from my class have died under mysterious circumstances, separately; so I'm glad I wasn't part of that scene.

i was the guy who invented new jokes that spread through school then couldn't convince people they were mine :)

i was also the guy who cut up pictures of people with xacto knives and recomposited them and photocopied them and distributed them throughout the school. in effect, an analog version of an internet message board. odd that in the future i would gravitate toward photoshop and tiki central :)

my school was so relatively small that either you were in the cool group or not. i was in the not. strange that, considering in the "not-cool" group there was no peer pressure to consume certain substances or conform to other social expectations. that said, there were a group of the cool people i could relate to because i could make them laugh and i guess they found that amusing.

i think that it's pretty certain that this informal poll will not find too many captains of the football team or prom queens. tiki would not really appeal to that demographic until it is "culturally safe" by being available at mainstream shopping venues or on espn. at which point it would be interesting to see where the present company will have retreated to.

[ Edited by: Johnny Dollar 2005-10-13 21:10 ]

I was one of the punks. I went to a fairly open-minded school. I do sometimes wonder about the movie The Outsiders and why during its popularity the yuppie jocks who loved the movie were still picking on the greaser/punks at school. When they watched the movie who were they relating to?

The day you can't admit to being a dork is when you truly become one.

I think this answers your question!

i love that picture! i always had a thing for goth girls, i guess it goes back to thinking morticia addams was the bomb.

All the freaks, skaters, headbangers, outsiders, maniacs, druggies etc. were lumped into one group at my high school. So thats where i hung my hat at.

Oh, and skinheads and jocks did not get along too well back then...trust me on this one. I went more rounds than i can remember with those bastards(the jocks).

I'm so jazzed. I just gave a presentation this morning at a local high school on careers and marketing, etc. - it was a class of overachieving supernerds like myself! They were already reading "Rich dad Poor dad" and some had their own BUSINESS already! I couldn't tell them anything they didn't already know. They were cool.

AND, I was especially thrilled to see a huge poster on the wall of TIKI - it started with a drawing of ETR's Pele mug and morphed into a Pottery Barn tiki mug/lamp that someone did as a marketing/ad assignment.

Thus confirming the theory behind this thread - supernerds love tiki, continuing on into the most recent generation...

I was in a wierd situation because all my geeky friends in Jr. High somewhow became the "cool" group around our Junior year in High School. I tried hanging with them, but always felt out of place with the newly formed iZod crowd. Enter the Class Clowns. WAY more fun. Yup, we were the geeks that thought everything was funny. Got all the same classes and tried to outdo eachother in an attempt to make the other person laugh and get busted.

On 2005-10-12 21:33, johntiki wrote:
I was a skateboarder in high school and thus considered an outsider. If you didn't play team sports or waste time taking part in after-school activities you were definitely not part of the "cool-crowd." Our allies were the punks and the artsy kids (this was before people actually called them Goths) who suffered the same verbal abuse we did. But I never thought of any of my friends as geeks or nerds and to this day I still wouldn't say we were... we were just individuals who liked things beyond the mainstream. Besides I always liked the punk and goth girls more than the cheerleaders anyway! :)

I was in the outside group in my High School...punks mostly. I did manage to date a few cheerleaders though....really kind of pissed off a few jock types.

Good theory. Yes, I would probably be considered a nerd/geek in high school. I was a good student but a terrible athlete. I was not active in school government or clubs, unless it was the band (marching band, symphonic band and jazz band). Amateur astronomy, wargaming and miniatures... Dungeons and Dragons didn't exist until I was in college. But despite being an "outsider" I certainly wasn't alone in that and had a pretty good time anyway.

On 2005-10-13 07:19, tikifish wrote:

I think this answers your question!

You are my new hero!

I was the nerd/drama geek. Was second runner up for class clown (ain't that a beeyatch?) and the only one in my class who listened to the Ramones, Sex Pistols and X. My friends were into Kenny Loggins, CSN, Styx, Eagles, Rush, etc. In fact, I special ordered the first X album before it was released and the record store clerks had never heard of them... My friends thought I was weird, but cray-zee! They never understood what I was in to...

I was an outsider. My high school was somewhat small so there was a fair amount of mingling between groups. I did well academically but was lousy at sports. The jocks tended to be the most popular. I was also a perv. I was voted most likely to become a photographer for Playboy. Never made it that far, now, I photograph Tiki mugs instead. :)

My brother's friends thought I was a white low rider, but I drove a 65 Volkswagon bug. I had long hair to my shoulder blades. I think I was just a loadie......I think. I hung out on the hill always dodging seagulls at lunchtime. High School was just one big baby sitter to me, I hated it.

What a great way to get into our heads!

I was an overachiever from the Class of '77, small town Northern California. Student government, 10 clubs, flag girl in band, yearbook photographer, cross country (chasing boys!), straight A's 'til I discovered boys! (I still managed to be number 11 in my class...). I also designed and sewed all my own clothes. We didn't have dress codes and oh my goodness the stuff I came up with. I was always wearing unique stuff. I was the only one in a one-piece suit at our class picnic. They were all stuck in a time warp and still wore mini skirts and bikinis. My group of friends were the brainy nerds. I wasn't always sure I fit in with them, with their plans for math degrees or engineering! One former friend decided to quit talking to me because my SAT's were higher than hers, but I didn't want to go to Davis with her! I happily ended up with a degree in Graphic Arts.

And as some of you know I work in clay now. And beads, and shells, and beach glass, and fabric, and paint, and photography, and on and on! I love to create!

I also am the goof who still makes sure my high school class has a reunion! I think I have issues!!!

On 2005-10-13 07:19, tikifish wrote:

I think this answers your question!

The 18 year old Goth-adelic-Mod in me is smitten!!!

I was so on the outside, I was on another planet.

My high school population for 9th thru 12th grades was less than 500. And on an island no less. It was all Lord Of The Flies. A social structure so rigid and stifling as to induce madness. So I didn't play the game. I never got beat up. Being 6'5" by freshman year helped. While other freshman were getting their asses kicked, the Seniors all thought I was a Junior.

I did get into one fight with a football player which ended with him on the losing side. Never got bothered by football players again.

I was into Mods, Psychadelic and Goth Music. I basically counted the days until I was free. My grades were ok, but my parents immersed me in so much history and such, that I was bored to tears. By me senior year, I only had three "real" classes. I had met all of my credit requirements, so my other classes were free periods and work experience. I was out of school by 11am. I'd do donut runs, and come back to school and sell them for a profit.

I often have nightmares that I'm back in school. And all I can think is; " There is no way I can endure this crap AGAIN."

I worked the system in a sort of poor Ferris Beuller way.

And still do to this day.

Ah, high school.....flinch.....shudder....

Because I run our class reunions, I talk to everyone before during and after. AND what I discovered it that pretty much NO ONE felt accepted and like part of the group. Even people who were uber-cool...

After the 20 year reunion one of the super popular football players called me and confided in me how happy he was that so many people talked to him during our 3 day marathon reunion. What a goof! He was voted most popular Freshman, Sophomore and Junior year and was one of the class favorites Senior year....How could he feel unliked? But he did!

(I sure went to a shallow high school, didn't I?)

I realized my Senior year that the reason certain people were named Homecoming Queen, or Prom Queen was because they went around and asked people to vote for them. One of my Brain friends was the most beautiful person, inside and out, so I got her a date (HER FIRST!) and campaigned for her to be Prom Queen. It was also her 18th birthday... I was almost successful, she was first runner-up! I was so happy to have finally figured out the system!

On 2005-10-15 11:12, WenikiTiki wrote:
(I sure went to a shallow high school, didn't I?)

Arent they all?

What a great thread.

I have no idea which group I was in in high school. I think we had alot of lateral mobility. Plus, everybody went to the same giant keg parties, so maybe there were cliques who hung out seperately at the parties, but we were all at the same party.

The "groups" that I can recall:

(Mixture of urban and rural zoning in Reno, Nevada, class of '77.)

1. Cowboys. Real, honest to gosh cowboys who came to school from the outlying ranch areas. Skoal in the left back pockets, large silver belt buckles, pressed jeans, nice boots, plaid shirts, hats they took off in class.

Really a nice bunch. Never saw one be a bully and they were gracious about teaching cool stuff like how to lasso and fix things. Honestly, never a once can I recall one of the cowboys being a bad person. The girl cowboys were called "goat ropers" and as a group were socially assertive - very can-do - and equally enjoyable.

As a group, they were great to party with and freely shared their drugs and alcohol with people.

We used to waterski in irrigation canals being pulled by pick-up trucks. I tried chew one time and that was enough - but I caught good natured ribbing for the other 3 years and however many days until high school was over.

2. Indians. We were zoned for the local Paiute reservation and those kids were tough! The toughest kids I ever met were the Paiute girls. If someone did one of their group wrong, the whole group would go after the offender. The boys were only slightly less tough. Fiercely loyal to school and each other. They all had good grades and studies in groups. Anyone could hang in the library with them and it made for better grades by osmosis! I was kind of sweet on one of the girls, so I got to hang with them off campus - the reservation was kind of Soviet: all the houses the same, but the families were almost Asian (stereotype) in their expectations of the kids.

The reservation was on the edge of a rural'urban border, so they got along well with the cowboys, in case anyone was wondering.

Also, they got lots of cheap alcohol and tobacco from the reservation store, so they were right there in the party mix, too!

3. Heads. These kids were the equivalent of the James Dean-like persona. Really kind of proto-grunge. They all hung out between classes in the designated smoking area. Still, they had some great athletes in their group, so there was a constant mix of heads and jocks getting along at school.

The heads listened to what would now be called "alternative" music. They had the best musical taste and were the group with all the mix cassettes for the parties. They had access to the most pot, too.

I wasn't a smoker (tobacco), so mostly I hung with heads outside school.

I think they liked everybody.

4. Jocks. Back in the day, I think every kid in school partied, so the jocks didn't really hang seperately from everybody else. I ran cross country, so they were used to seeing skinny little guys in the locker room during the fall. They did the most "guy bonding," like towel fighting and wrestling, but as a 110 pound scrawny kid, they actually tried to tease and joke around in a way that someone my size could feel part of it all. One of the guys I admired most was our school's best shot putter - he was proto Tony Robbins. Everything was always the greatest and was ALL RIGHT! He could drink a quart of beer without taking a breath, too.

So, the jocks were nothing like in those movies. The jock girls were also very academic and hung together with the indians in study hall, so there was alot of overlap between those two groups, which made for much harmony.

5. The "Soshes". Pronounced like the first syllable of soc-ial. This was the group with feathered hair, bith the boys and the girls. They came from the nicer neighborhoods up the hill. Trans Ams and step side pick-ups or vans were the norm.

I think maybe this is a group I didn't know more about because I wasn't in their social circle in terms of having to go to catillion (spelling) or taking those night courses in table manners or ballroom dancing. The had debutantes, too!

They preferred booze and many times arrived at the parties already drunk because they started in somebody's basement who's dad was away. They had an epidemic of pregnancy, which does bode well in terms of the girls' "giving" nature.

They also had the highest mortality rate in our school - the exclusive neighborhoods there and around Lake Tahoe were treacherous, and there were several terribly tragic wrecks involving vans or trucks full of soshes.

When I was a freshmen, I fell for a sosh and loved her nadly. Her dad had a McIntosh stereo and drove a Porsche 928 that he let me drive when I was a sophomore. The girl had a big blue Tans Am. She was a great kisser and loved mixing worlds. She was a soprano singer who did opera recitals and then we'd go play the Who at 120dB in her car and relax. As an only child in a privileged family, she didn't fully appreciate her resources and floundered later on.

Oops, too much info.

Anyway, the soshes were great on a one on one basis or once you knew more than one of them.

All in all, the American Pie movies seem to accurately protray their society and proclivities.

There were some I didn't like, but I can recall no outward antagonism.

6. Nerds. Nerds loved Tolkien and Star Trek and what used to pass for a computer. They were into D&D, too. D&D overlapped with the heads, which made for hard partying nerds, so they were more a type of person within the milleau rather than being aseperate entity. Even the nerds who didn't party came to the parties to hang.

7. Car guys. They lived for cars, but like the cowboys, would be the first to run to help if someone in the parking lot had car trouble. They'd hang 'til all hours in the school shop, sneaking beer and working on projects. Our school had a night education thing so the shop was open at all hours.

They came across like that club of guys in Grease. They's all be listening to Social Distortion and working solely on muscle cars in my "where are they now" scenario.

8. ROTC. We called them "rotsies." Their world was strange and unfamiliar to me, but they were all very pleaseant. One of them became our school president in senior year. Three of my ROTC friends were gay/lesbian, which seemed quite a coincidence, so I wonder again if I was fully aware of their social structure. The times weren't as open as they are now, but we could go and hang out at ROTC headquarters and sneak beers and tequila (they specialized for some reason) after cross country.

9. The art crowd. Still more beatnik than goth, but they were the ones who were into the script of the Godfather movies and were in love with Joel Grey and all things "Cabaret."

At one point, I had a crush on a girl who was into acting, so I went to alot of plays. I was in two plays, but the repetition of doing eight shows and trying to make each one seem spontaneous would have driven me to destruction. Nice group. No prima donnas that I can recall - more like a giant mutual support group.

They hung out and liked to recite Mony Python to each other and talk about "film."

They were into tragedy, as well, and partied fatalistically. One kid died of an alcohol OD after dramatically swigging a near-quart of tequila and locking himself in his parents' basement. Two of them discovered "needle" drugs and drifted away from school and got arrested in San Francisco. It was quite a scandal!

As a whole, I think of them as a group of Sylvia Plath's - kinda fragile and at day's end most interested in the drama that was uniquely their life, but nice.

10. Black kids. I lived in a mixed neighborhood, so I always thought black kids were just part of the mix. This worked out well, because our high school was only about 4% black, so when we all showed up from our neighborhood in a mixed crowd, there was no seperate group to make, socially. I mention this group only because nowadays I wonder if it went so smoothly because people of that skin tone were such a "novelty", so to say. I will not judge how things went with other school areas with kids who grew up surrounded only by their own color.

I do think our neighborhood produced kids who were used to people looking differently than one another, which was all to our psychic benefit.

OK, that was way too long, but y'all stirred up fond memories.

All in all, I would say I was a social dabbler. I'd find people who interested me and then hang out. I liked being with mixtures of people and colors. Maybe I was never embedded in a group enough, mentally, to notice the drama that I see in the movies or hear about from modern kids.

I think drugs, alcohol, the western tradition of self determination and politeness, and recognizing early on that group studying made things go smoother made high school very nice.

Also, I started working at a record store when I was a sophomore, so I got to see many many of my classmates when they came in and we'd talk tunes and crank whatever music they were into - it probably turned out to be a great social lubricant!

That being said, I never did manage to get a diploma, but that's a whole 'nother story.

[ Edited by: Geeky Tiki 2005-10-17 10:09 ]

I went to a small school located in the middle of a huge corn field. No way to skip school. Most of the kids were from big farm families and everyone knew each other.
I happened to live on the edge of one of the bigger towns, but I was sent to this school. I had to ride a bus for 20 plus miles one way until I got my drivers license.
I always thought I was a little too strange for everyone. I wore wigs, very modern clothes most of my own design.
Since I live so far away, I didn't get to do much after school things. I thought I never really fit in, but liked all the different social groups and could move freely between any of them.
Got all the needed classes under my belt early on, so by my senior year I joined a work program where I could take a job and work from noon on. Most of my time was spent with guys I knew from work who had formed a rock band ( this is 1977) and eventually got my husband and brother into the band
1977 turned into a very big year for me. I graduated ( although I don't remember much of it as I had pneumonia with high fever and went to the hospital right after we got back home) I also married my husband a month after graduation who I met on the CB radio (we didn't have the internet in those days..)
At our last class reunion I was surprised to find out how popular I really was in school..funny how we don't always know it at the time....

I really don't remember, But I do remember
painting my shoes, growing an afro and
eating Braunschweiger sandwiches for lunch...........
..........Oh wait,now I remember!

Ahhh, lets see...

6'4".
135 lbs.
Drama Club.
Latin Club.
Art Editor for school newspaper.
Fashion sense so skewed that I won the "Tacky Tourist Day" costume contest without knowing it was even on.
Voted "Most Likely To Marry Out Of My Own Species".
Wrote all my class notes in Runes.

Looked like a cross between Screech from Head of the Class and Weird Al.

Needless to say, I was not in the "in" crowd. But, I kinda liked it that way.

Almost needed oxygen the first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite. Anxiety attack. Tough watching it from a fetal position.

Geeez... Wished the "Geek-Chic" thing was popular back in my day. I would have been a god.

I was a nerd/punk. I remember being picked on for liking obscure bands like U2 and REM. :|

Later went kinda goth. But the retro culture stuff has been with me for about 10 years now.

--SBiM

First of all, Geeky Tiki-- that writeup was pretty cool. Your high scohool was way more interesting than mine!

We had the jocks and the nerds and the brains. Every other clique was a "town." I went to a Catholic high school with kids from maybe two dozen towns. Kids from the same town, if they weren't jocks, nerds or brains tended just hang around with the kids from their town. I might have been a jock but it was real simple--if I played sports, I had no ride home.

Actually, that was for half the year. During the second half of they year, the kids who were in the musical all made a clique. Senior year I tried out for the musical (West Side Story) because my friends all did and I didn't have a car; if I wasn't in the musical, I didn't get a ride home! It wasn't bad at all being in that clique, there were lots of girls!

I was my own kind of aloof eccentric, I guess.

I liked the Ramones, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys and the Clash. But I also liked Joan Baez, Neil Young, The Beatles and Elvis. My deepest musical passions were New Orleans/traditional SF-New Orleans jazz and opera. I collected antique opera records and old records generally. I was a vintage clothing fanatic but never had money to buy any, so t-shirts with (generally odd/nerdy/sci-fi) logos and jeans were my usual costume. I was an incipient Goth, (visually speaking only though, the accompanying lifestyle has never appealed to me) for years, but only blossomed as such in college.

I studied opera and sang in local shows and revues, and performed solos for various church choirs. I was in both the school choir and elite vocal ensemble, but I had a mutual loathing thing going on with the extremely slimy choir teacher and after my freshman year regretfully avoided school musical productions. (And yep, I later found out he was doing grisly things with Select Girls, who usually got the leads in his productions. He's a minister now.) There was no drama to speak of, and it pisses me off to this day that only my favorite English teacher and I really gave a crap about Shakespeare at my rather lame high school.

I threw myself instead into creative writing and was on the school paper all four years, generally as either chief copy editor and/or chief feature editor. I was also the only girl in Print Shop--I still love linotype machines!--and took photography for most of high school. I especially enjoyed cooking up weird photo projects utilizing my father's antique Brownie and 50's-era East German Commie Camera. I did a lot of collage work, often involving selected usage of disturbing sepia imagery from Victorian photos. In college, I saw the same sort of stuff pop up in NIN videos, oddly enough. I was kind of a creepy girl.

I was an antique book lover and spent most of my spare time in used bookstores. I was lucky because Berkeley and the Bay Area in general was chock full of such shops back then. I often made elaborate collaged covers for more fragile Victorian books. I loved vintage sci-fi and Victorian fantasy (think Jules Verne and HG Wells, but much more obscure) and had a large collection, though I could never afford old Arkham books or most vintage SF magazines, sadly. Even then those were more difficult and pricey to come by.

I was a Francophone and loved the occasional field trips to snooty French restaurants, but I was never comfortable joining groups generally and mostly hung out with an eclectic combo of a few 'popular' girls who were at least interesting, some shy, bookish types, and the sci-fi/Medieval Club geeks who were definitely the nicest folks of all. Not to mention the most fun! And although I never took the slightest interest in D&D or mock battles with cardboard weapons in the park, I thought that most of the guys who did were extremely cute :wink:.

For some reason I have never managed to fathom, I was a Doctor Who freak for a while. But I preferred 50's science fiction and still do to this day. H.P. Lovecraft and T.E. Lawrence were lasting passions. Likewise Monty Python--they've warped my brain to this very day.

I am always hanging back and hiding under my huge mop of hair in group pictures. I was very slender, very pale, and had HUUUGE wire rim glasses. I had, sadly, few close friends--although I did want them. I tended to 'miss the boat' socially. People rather forgot to invite me to things because I was so quiet, but in recent years I've found that they all liked me very much and still do, which makes me happy. I've also found that several girls I always wanted to be close to (but never managed it) have HUGE amounts of interests and tastes in common with me, and I feel regretful about the fun times we missed. I suppose I was rather lonely sometimes, but I was a classic introvert and since my boyfriend Howard was the same, we got along very well indeed.

I can't say I was unhappy in high school. Quite the opposite. Generally I was very much my own person and didn't care in the slightest what others thought of me. I had ZERO ambition to be "popular" or "in" though I didn't resent or disdain those who did. I hugely preferred high school to junior high--the worst, most painfully awkward and depressed years of adolescence for me were 11-14 or so. Everything after that was a picnic, comparatively speaking.

This lack of ambition extended to activities. I never ran for anything or was elected to anything. I enjoyed the intellectual challenges and was finally really interested in many subjects. I was an extremely good student and aced my advanced placement tests as well, but I hated the SAT and had to make a huge effort to even take it. I still am very much against standardized testing.

My one great regret is that I avoided art classes because, basically, I can't draw for s**t. I still should've taken them. But I am my own worst critic, especially in creative matters. I know where I have talent and where I don't, and I unfortunately let that rigidity keep me out of a very cool group of people. Similarly, I am sorry that I let my obnoxious Berkeley feminist attitude turn me off to home-ec classes, because the shameful truth of it all is that I turned out to enjoy domesticity. Who knew. I might have made someone a nifty wife if I'd opened my mind enough to the idea...and had not been essentially brainwashed to look down on such lifestyle choices. Since I've never been career-minded, it would've been smart back then to have explored ALL my options as a woman with a bit more flexibility. sigh

I was also a Luddite technologically, which is damned funny as nowadays you can scarcely separate me from my cellphone and my laptop. But it's significant that I am still very choosy about my technology--for instance, I still listen to LPs and CDs and see no reason for anything else at this point, although I do agree that audio tapes are pretty much just annoying and have happily discarded them.

I generally had a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA, marred only by my execrable PE grades. I hated jocks and sports and still do. This was my one great area of intolerance, in fact. I wasn't even as bad at most sports as many girls, but I LOATHED all that SO much it still makes me grind my teeth just thinking of it! To this day, I feel resentful in shorts and consequently never wear them.

Well, not unless they are attached to a gorgeous vintage Hawaiian sunsuit, anyway. :D

Jen, that is TOO freaky about your erstwhile classmates. Do you think you went to school with a serial killer?!? Yeek. I believe I did, and I dated him years later. THAT was interesting, but it's also a story for another day.

Yeah, this IS a marvelous thread idea, isn't it? Hope I haven't bored anyone to death!

--tikivixen

And with all that blathering, I probably neglected to make the point that I wasn't really in any group very much. A fringe-dweller, that's me.

I knew NOTHING about tiki culture, which is weird because I always loved old places and old restaurants. I can only put it down to the fact that my parents were not much into drinking, and they were also reclusive so we never went out much anyway.

I've since learned that my mom's cousin (who totally reminds me of Charles Phoenix) was way into it. He went to all the old Bay Area tiki places when he lived up here in the late 50's, and I have a great pic of him and my mom at a party--she's in a fabulous sarong dress!! He even lived most of his adult life in Hawaii and his lifetime partner is a Hawaiian guy.

Sadly, they were not a big influence on me in my youth. Too bad!!!