Preppies and Preppers
An essay on the Pain of Asking
Preppies have a code. Aside from Izod shirts and the Old School Tie, Preppies have an iron law:
Never Be Seen Trying.
Your grades, your athletic performance, your manifestations of wealth, your social standing; all of these must be excellent and enviable, but also understated and achieved without effort.
Otherwise it doesn’t count.
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Terry Pratchett has a wonderful series about a young witch named Tiffany Aching.
“Witches...are needed-needed practically all the time, but not, in a very polite and definitely unspoken way, not exactly wanted…The witch was different. The witch knew things that you did not. The witch was another kind of person. The witch was someone that perhaps you should not anger. The witch was not like other people.”
Tiffany is still in her teens, with the same types of desire for love and friendship and belonging as any other young woman, and yet possessed of a talent for healing and taking necessary-but-difficult action that is a little mysterious and unsettling to everyone around her.
It’s a lonely place. And hard, sometimes.
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The summer I was 18, I was working on an island in a closed community of young staff, with as rigid a hierarchy and social code as any other environment of its kind, including the rule that you had to pretend the rules didn’t exist.
But I am terrible at pretense. Since I could talk, I’ve been blundering around not realizing that everyone is choosing not to acknowledge that the emperor is naked, or that the popular girl is a psychopath,
Or that the best way to get something is simply to ask for it.
That summer, I decided I wanted a sought-after spot on the tiny close-up crew, staying after the guest season had ended to shut down the island. So I went to management and asked.
And got the job.
And for that whole close-up, I sat in my room wondering why none of the other girls would talk to me.
Because, you see, I didn’t know you aren’t supposed to ask. You don’t belong if you ask. You only belong if it’s bestowed on you. If you have to ask, you didn’t earn it. You’re an upstart.
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A good witch doesn’t have a choice. She has to do what’s right, regardless of what happens. If she has to sacrifice her comfort and security, so be it.
She does what she perceives that she should do, even if it doesn’t make friends.
Even if it makes enemies.
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And it’s right is to ask for what you want, and then work with what you get.
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As always, premium subscribers receive a discount, after the break.