Breakfast Club
Subculture
A groan was felt simultaneously by the Breakfast Club
members, as Becca gave a large bottle of sparkles to Pixie. Pixie “eee-ed”
and “ooo-ed” in delight, as Becca gave a sympathetic look to the rest of us.
“I didn’t want them in my room anymore…” Becca’s lame
excuse was said with a blush. Naturally the sparkles, being something
that Pixie loves and aspired to be, were opened on the spot. Now not
many of us enjoy being covered with sparkles, least of all Becca. As
he poured them out into his hand there was a sudden lack of us being within
a 50-foot radius of Pixie. Not many 17-year-old high school boys will
willingly cover themselves in glitter of any form. And I only think
I belong to a subculture of mainstream society (this will become clear by
the end of this essay).
For the most part we’re just normal teenagers, going
to a normal high school, complaining about homework and overcrowding.
That is if you see us alone. Singly we are quiet, keep to ourselves,
and tend to lean towards the artsy side of life. Get us together, and
you have a loud, crazy, psychotic, slightly destructive, will-do-anything
group of best friends. We call ourselves The Breakfast Club (a teacher
in G-hall gave us that name years ago). We meet every morning before
school in 3-hall. For the past three years it’s been in G-hall, but
due to the massive influx of foot traffic through there, we moved. We
consist of a misfit group of teenagers who either stand out or fade away in
the crowd that is high school.
We share one mind. Ok, maybe not quite that literally,
but we definitely have a way of thinking that connects each of us to the others.
For example, Kei says that she’s going to create an army of ladybugs that
are infected with the plague in order to wipe out mankind, so that we can
have the world to ourselves and rule supreme. How many teenagers commonly
think of world domination? And how many of their friends would jump
up and down at the prospect of ruling supreme over a world devoid of human
life? Then there is our total lack of tolerance for stupid people.
Most people will just ignore someone who’s painfully stupid. Should
Zion comment on how much she hates stupid people, the response from the group
is a chorus of agreements, and more world domination plotting. Not
one of us truly believes that we will ever achieve world domination, but
its fun to think of having complete control over the world when we have none
now. Being only teenagers we have some control over what happens around
us, but compared to the freedom an adult experiences, this control is small.
We have to go to school and to the classes assigned to us whether we want
them or not. Several of the members have had do go through hell to
just change one class because of really bad counselors who care more their
own life being simple then about the life of the student. There is
also this whole thing of not being able to vote yet. We don’t get a
say in who the president of our country is going to be even though we can
have very strong feelings on who we want to see in power.
Our language differs from that of the mainstream through
all the inside jokes, due to our way of thinking as one. If someone
were to say, “I saw Steppy and she was going like this…” then start spazing
out, everyone in the T.B.C. (the Breakfast Club) would know exactly why.
Or if someone were to come up to a few of us gathered and say, “Yes!
Let’s tie ourselves to the crazy vampire!” --what would jump to all
the minds of the T.B.C. is last week’s Buffy (not that we are all avid watchers,
just the two who are tell everyone else everything about what happened this
week). We have many things like that which can be said out of the blue
and everyone knows what the speaker is referring to. We have, in the
past, also come up with code words. These are mostly temporary and serve
the purpose of confusing eavesdroppers; they are easily forgotten.
There is no one leader of our group. Unlike other
groups who have one dominant leader, changing from week to week, or a group
which has no defined leader and therefore is very vaguely defined; the T.B.C.
follows no one person. Instead we have a model of leadership that is
not really seen a leadership in the mainstream world. We lead by serving.
That is to say, whoever sacrifices much for the sake of the group is the most
respected member; the unstated leader. Their ideas are more promoted,
and their advice is more heeded. The way in which we lead is not set,
but natural. One person doesn’t say, “Let’s go do this…” and take it
as if it was set in stone and everyone must come; instead we make suggestions
to the whole group and then make modifications so that as many people as possible
can come to each event. There have been a few who try to control the
whole group, who have worked only to further their own status in order to
be better off. They were banished.
I hate to say it, but we are an exclusive group.
When we’re together we don’t see anyone else in the world. It has to
do with our personalities. We have never really matched up with mainstream
perspectives; we just can’t manage to get along with the majority of society.
We only really get along with the world as long as we’re accepted. It’s
the whole ‘treat others as you want to be treated’ thing. Again this
is more of a natural way of things then a set design. If someone is
kind, they receive kindness back. All it takes is for one member to
say that this person is cool and the whole group accepts them. Someone
cruel, condescending, or just stupid only gets back what he or she put in
towards us. The same goes for outside authority; respect returns respect.
We are different from any other group of teenage friends
that I have ever observed, for instance, in the way we stick so closely together
instead of drifting from group to group. We don’t drift from group to
group. We stay together. We created a safe haven in the unsafe
world. We depend on, trust, and love each other. This has been
built up because we look out for each other. If someone needs help or
is in a bind they have a collective group who will come to his or her aid.
It’s something that I have yet to see in the mainstream popular groupings
of teenagers: the idea of loyalty. We don’t stab each other in the
back, gossip or be cruel to any other member.
We are a subculture off the mainstream. We are teenagers, looked down
upon because we are young. We are The Breakfast Club, looked down upon
for being weird. We are true, strange and strong. We don’t mesh
because we don’t want to conform. “You look at me and laugh because
I’m different. I look at you and laugh because you’re all the same.”
We refuse to be the same, so we created our own subculture of society.
