Of Mean Girls, Cliques, and Exclusion

When I was 9, my family moved from our row home in Northeast Philly (Oxford Circle, to be exact) to a four bedroom duplex in an insular borough a stone's throw from the city line. We weren't quite suburban, like Abington and Jenkintown to our west and we were still no longer in the City.  The family on the other side of the duplex had a daughter my age: Pam. Next door, there was a family with five kids, including another girl my age, Laura. Pam and Laura were close friends with Lori. I was quickly absorbed into their circle and, a few weeks later, for reasons apparent only to Pam and Laura and Lori, I was thrust out. And that was the first time I encountered Mean Girls and their power.

I survived that period of time and the many cliques and mean girls I encountered through the rest of elementary school, and junior high, and high school. I may have even been a part of a clique and I was likely mean to people. I chalked it all up to human nature and growing up and I moved on.

As I got older, finished college, moved to Massachusetts, got a job, made friends, got a different job, went through numerous roommates, met a boy, married him, bought a house, I had many different groups of friends. I had friends from work, friends I met through my roommates, friends I met through volunteer work, friends who I did sprint triathlons with, friends I played tennis with. I threw epic parties and invited all of these people and they all got along and sometimes even started new friendships. I never called any of these groups of friends a 'Clique' because, of course, I had left cliques where they belong: in the heated imaginations of pubescent Mean Girls and the girls denied membership to the clique at hand.

Imagine my surprise when, after having two kids, and getting involved in the goings on at their school, I was accused of belonging to a clique. Wut?  For reals?

All of the definitions of the word 'clique' include 'exclusive' in the definition. Meaning that a clique works actively to exclude others. So, when I served as Board President of the PTO at my kids' school,  a time spent begging parents to step up and volunteer, who, exactly, was I trying to exclude?

I met a few friends last night and they were astonished that I didn't think that there is a PTO Clique. And I am still stunned by this thought. I see people who can and want to do things and people who can't or who don't want to. I'm grateful to the parents who can adm do, because my kids benefit from that, which is why I step up and do whenever I can. If, in the process of doing, I meet other parents who do, and we become friends, how does that count as exclusion?  Isn't a benefit of being a volunteer the ability to meet new people?

I am a born extrovert. I understand that there are people who are not; in fact, I married one (proving that we can get along). And I understand that it can be hard to step forward when you think that you are going to be judged or unwelcome.

I also understand that people choose where to live based on all sorts of reasons: proximity to work or family, cost of housing, the schools. And then we are all mashed together: those of us born and bred here, those of us here because we couldn't afford Newton, those of us who work in the 128 belt or take the train to Boston every morning. And then, our kids all end up in school together and we are
forced to acknowledge each other: Republicans and Democrats, cat people and dog people, parents of boys and parents of girls, sports parents and dance parents.

Can we leave the Mean Girl cliche behind? Be done with the concept of exclusion? Teach our kids that they can do anything they want to do without worrying about fitting a mold or others' perceptions?

Or is being a parent of a school -aged child nothing more than an awkward return to the days of Pam and Laura and Lori?