High School Clique Names

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, yes. Hi, how are you?

Hi, doing well. Who’s this?

My name is John. I’m from Richmond, Virginia.

Hiya, John.

Hey, John. What’s up?

I have a question about a high school term from when I went to high school, which is kind of back in the day a little bit. I’m a Gen Xer, and I graduated in 1989. I went to this high school in Yorktown, Virginia, and it was a very stratified high school, just like a John Hughes movie. There were specific groups of students, and they kind of stayed within their own group. So you had your jocks, you had your nerds, you had your skaters, and then you had a particular group that was interesting. They were called Grits.

Grits?

Yeah, D-R-I-T-S, Grits.

Grits. What were they like?

They were, and I don’t even think this species of high school student exists anymore, but they were the metal kids. They kind of wore jean jackets with Ronnie James Dio patches, and they wore, like, leather boots up to their knees, and they were kind of, you know, rebellious. And, you know, when I went to high school, they had a smoking area, and they were always in the smoking area. So they were just their own substrat of student. And I thought it was interesting. Years later, I was talking to a friend who was from southeastern Pennsylvania, and I was describing this kind of stratified social system in my high school. And he said, well, we had the same kind of students, but we called them Hessians.

Hessians.

Hessians.

Hessians. How do you spell that?

H-E-S-S-I-A-N-S, I believe.

Just like the German troops for hire.

Yeah, sure. And he was in Pennsylvania, did you say?

Pennsylvania. So then I started to think, is there a different name for this substrata of student, citizen across the country? Like every region has a different name. I thought it was just really an interesting concept. So I wonder if you guys can help me out with that.

Yeah, that’s a great question. I love this. This is good. You know, I don’t think that research has been done on this. I don’t think there’s been a thorough study of the names of high school cliques across the country, but I’d love to see one.

Oh, my gosh. That would be great. We’re breaking new ground here. Maybe we should undertake it. But I can tell you that both of those terms that you named, grits and Hessians, are used or have been used in other schools besides the two that you know.

No kidding.

Yeah. And Hessian is really interesting because it’s transmitted orally. And as we often talk about on the show, that means the spelling then is highly variable. And you will find it spelled H-E-S-H-E-N, Hessian. You’ll find it shortened to a Hesh or Heshes.

No kidding.

Or even Heshers. Was there a movie Heshers?

I don’t know. But anyway, these are all related terms. And they refer to what my era called. And I’m within an age of, I’m a Gen Xer as well. I graduated in 1988. We called them metalheads or the smokers.

Metalheads.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. So these were the guys with the long hair and the boots and the black outfits and the metal shirts and the tattoos. Highly disdainful authority.

Yeah. Well, that’s all high schoolers, but they were even further on the pail.

Yeah, I wasn’t. I wasn’t. I was one of the prudes. Come on. And in the grits term, I find this actually in some studies that have been written about high school cliques. They talk about some schools, I believe, in Texas and Iowa, where there were, at the time when these studies were written in the 90s, groups that were known as the grits. And they described them as the losers or the outcasts or the ones on the fringe, the ones who aren’t a part of any real active student group, but kind of glom together because they’re disdainful of everything else that is happening there.

And is this gritty or because they eat grits in Iowa?

There are a number of fanciful explanations. It has nothing to do with the food grits. It isn’t an acronym or an initialism. And what it probably just refers to the grittiness of their nature. Because they tend to be associated with shop class, the guys who will rebuild the car, the guys who they work on their own car and it has primer everywhere. And, you know, maybe they wore yesterday’s jeans or last week’s jeans or, you know, last month’s jeans every day. You know, those kind of guys. It’s an extra version of, like, you know, greasers from the 50s.

Greasers, yeah. We used that and we used hoods. But not the cleaned-up version that they had in the movies. I mean, we’re talking—and usually it’s men, or young men, right? It’s usually like 9 out of 10 of these are men.

They’re female grids. They have, you know, yeah. But mostly men, right?

Right. Yeah. You speculated that this crowd doesn’t exist anymore, and I would love to hear from listeners who are still in high school whether or not there is a new name for this crowd. We’re talking what used to be the metalheads or not quite the goths and the emo kids. I mean, because we’re talking about, they listen to, we’re talking about, they listen to the songs where, the music where they have the cookie monster voice, you know?

What?

That’s what they call it in metal.

The cookie monster voice.

Right. Raw, raw, raw, raw, raw, raw. You know? I mean, what do you.

Crash and black metal and death metal and all that.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So in your school, you there, you high schoolers listening to the show, in your school, what do you call that crowd? Frankly, what do you call any of the cliques in your school? Give us a call, 877-929-9673. We’ll put this data together, and we’ll talk about it on a future show, okay?

Thank you so much for calling.

Thank you. Brilliant show, guys.

Thank you. Take care.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye.