Look Around

Look Around
By: Ashley Green
WARNING: Some may take offense in reading any or all of this paper.
Sit in the cafeteria one day and look around. I’m sure you will automatically find the cliques sitting in the room. Really, it’s not too hard to do.
The black clothed goth-emo-90’s punk-scene kids sit in the nearby corner, as though trying to hide in the shadows away from the world. They are all similar, same dark clothes, makeup, and nails, and may well just all be called goth, because they will simply tell you they are something else; though they all look the same.
The druggies, most of who have been convicted of at least one crime, sit in the corner along the same wall as the goth group. They are too ‘far out’ so notice anything else going on around them, or how far away from them everyone pushes themselves, as though they will catch a disease.
The third corner of the room is occupied by the pimple-faced nerds, Dungeons and Dragons books open, all searching for the perfect way to level up, or talking about the newest videogame that has come out and arguing over who beat it first.
The nerds are sure that their corner never overflows into the nearby preps table, where the boys sit with collared shirts and the girls wear their hundred and ten dollar boots, perfect hair, flawless makeup which they are needlessly touching up for the fifth time today. The boys are talking about who is the hottest girl in school while the girls are planning whose car would look best to take to the football game tonight, being played by the boys two rows over, the jocks.
The jocks sit there, ruling the school in the center of the room, wearing their football jerseys or their varsity jacket. This is where all the ‘star’ athletes congregate; the captain of the basketball team, the all-star swimmer, the champion wrestler, and the fastest runner. The jocks not only are school-sports kids, but they spent all non-school time in sports that the school doesn’t offer; lacrosse, volleyball, hockey, etc. You name it, they play it. They laugh and joke, occasionally glancing to the table next to theirs, where the cheerleaders sit.
The cheerleaders watch the room, the queens of the land we call school. They are almost indistinguishable from the preps on a normal day, but today their long hair is pulled up, matching, of course, and they are all in their uniforms. There is a game tonight, what else would they be wearing? Anything they don’t like is laugh worthy, or simply not worth talking to.
Just down the row from them, the theater and arts students stake clams to the table. This is the most diverse group in the room. Here, the musicians, artists, singers, painters, and actors sit to eat on the rare occasion that they are in the room, with practices and just the right inspiration they venture off to their classrooms to continue their work though lunch.
Between the preps and the jocks sit a small group who can go by no name other than grade lovers. These grade lovers are the kids who think that an 85 is horrible, and forget an 80, it’s beneath them. They are the kids who have everything done the day it is assigned, who have never handed in a late paper, never missed a homework assignment, who obsess over a test until long after it has been taken.
And then, in the last open space in the room, in the farthest corner from the door where you stand, sit the quiet kids. The teacher’s favorite students, the ones who sit silent in the back row of class, get decent but not perfect grades, have a small group of friends, and have never been in trouble. They tend to fall victim to the jokes of the center-of-the-room crowd (the preps, jocks, cheerleaders, and even a few arts students), because of their year-out-of-date-clothes or quite attitude, but they are too passive to fight them about it.
Now, take a good, close look at these groups. What about the jock who loves videogames? Or the prep who would rather wear black and hide away? And don’t forget the cheerleader who draws behind everyone else’s backs? Oh, and there is the druggie who wants to play football, and the nerd who has the flawless makeup and hair. And then the quiet kids, who do non-school sports, them too. Where do they go?
Mix everyone together now and put them where they really belong. Go ahead, it’s okay. The cheerleader sitting next to the nerd won’t die, and the jock who touched the quiet kid won’t become mute, the prep who is between two druggies didn’t get a disease. Now, that’s better, everyone is where they should really be. Wait, that just made the cafeteria one big mass didn’t it? Exactlly.