On Social Circles

I realize, that from the outside, I may not be judged as a nerd by people that do not know me. The reasoning for this is simple: I do not hang out with other nerds. Don't get me wrong, I am most certainly a nerd (I go on dictionary.com for fun, okay?), but is not an unknown fact that people are often judged on their social circles, or cliques.

However, cliques is usually paired with stereotypes, and stereotyping usually has to involve clothing. When you have to wear a uniform, it can be kind of difficult to set apart the goths from the preppies and the preppies from the geeks. That doesn't mean they don't exist, but it makes it more difficult.

But, I did attend a public middle school, and from that alone, I can tell you enough about social circles. Now,  the reason I did not hang out with the nerds was simple, I hung out with the same people I hung out with in elementary school, and at my elementary school there were 3 groups of people. The kids who were dating since the 3rd grade, the kids who played Star Wars the Clone Wars at recess, and everyone else in between. (Okay, I did love ST and the Clone Wars version, but I didn't tell people that). And everyone over the age of 12 knows what happens to those groups in middle school. The dating kids start making out and partying, the nerds start debating Hunger Games and the people in the middle become all of the high school cliques in the makings. (Okay, I do also love the Hunger Games, but the popularity of it is kind of annoying)  Plus, I had TONS of actual nerd friends but I didn't "hang out" with them. It was more of a hi in the hallways thing.

If I had to choose a word for my middle school clique, it would have to be the Leftovers. There were people like me, who could NEVER hang with the populars but cared a tad too much about their appearance to be full on geeks. Then there were the wannabes who hung out with the populars in elementary school but got dropped along the social pyramid climb. 

That was at school. The people I hung out with outside of school, them I would call the Single Ladies. Not a clique but self explanatory enough? Yeah.