Hot Jocks

Hot Jocks
Sometimes, especially here in London, people ask me if I was ever a cheerleader. Because, probably, I’m very energetic and loud and generally helpful to people. And I usually return the question with a look of dismay, saying raspily, do you think I was a cheerleader, in a tone that makes no mistakes in saying that the answer was no. And I wasn’t. But the truth of it is that when I went into highschool, I really really wanted to be a cheerleader, but I was too chicken to try. I was afraid of failure, of trying to be in ‘the scene’ with the hot jocks—even though the school I went to was not a stereotypical Hollywood brat-pack type scene. I still, in some way, felt inferior and intimidated.

The realm of the ‘hot jocks’ could just be a euphemism for the cool crowd, or the in crowd, the lucky ones—a set that exists everywhere, at least in the places where I’ve lived. There is a common misconception that those people who are in the cool crowd in younger years get their comeuppance in later years, and end up working for people who they used to bully. In some situations it might be true. But what tends to happen, is that one set, is just replaced by another. If the little guys get their dues in later years, its generally only to replicate what they were so beleaguered by in their youth.