To begin this story, here are some facts:<\/p>\n
The summer when I was 12 I spent a lot of time playing tennis. We didn’t have a club where I lived, but the town about 7 miles away did have one – you had to be a member, even to enter the courts. As a military kid who’d lived in small towns, I’d never known such an idea.<\/p>\n
Though I didn’t live in the town with the “members only” tennis club, my grandmother did. That summer, she bought me a membership there which included lessons.<\/p>\n
The town I lived in was very sleepy. I’d love it today, but back then there just wasn’t much action. Plus, I didn’t get along with my mother, who was always home. Therefore, playing tennis virtually all day, every day, and staying at my grandmother’s house, where I was always welcome, made a lot of sense. My grandmother loved it too. She worried a lot about me, but the tennis club was three minutes away from her house, right in the center of town, and lit up at night. Even she concluded that, at the tennis club, day or night, I was safe.<\/p>\n
I’d never lived a long time anywhere, so was naive about social stratification. I recognize today, for instance, that every town has prominent people and less prominent people. (I’m not prominent, for instance:) As a kid on the military bases, I was from a prominent family, since my dad was renowned to be good at his job. It was the Cold War then, so his job was important. I took all that for granted, never realizing that social status comes from a reason<\/em>.<\/p>\n The town with the tennis club didn’t have a military base, so the local kids hated me because they didn’t think I belonged there. In a way, they were right: I was a guest in their town, staying at my grandmother’s. Moreover, new people didn’t typically arrive there. If anything, its economy was likely receding (this was the early 80s after all, and it was a farming area), so people were more likely leaving than showing up. Almost every kid there had been born there.<\/p>\n That the locals didn’t like me, I didn’t care, but found it interesting. In fact, I exaggerate: not all the local kids hated me; some liked me very much. The social elite<\/em> resented me, though. They were the most prominent people at the club, and felt it was theirs<\/em>, and should not be available to “outsiders.”<\/p>\n What I didn’t understand then, but realize now, is that the social elite resented the other local kids as well. Looking back, the “top shelf” kids didn’t talk to the “common” local kids of the tennis club, either. In fact, they talked to me more than to the locals, though it was normally bad attention.<\/p>\n One of the socially elite kids was nice to me. I knew from my grandmother that his family was prominent in town: they had been in the hardware business for generations. They were a big family, well connected and present at the tennis club on warm summer evenings: his aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, etc, all played.<\/p>\n None of the other elite kids was nice to me. They clearly thought they were too good for me. Unlike a local to whom they’d been condescending for years, I didn’t agree. I refused to acknowledge that, because they were born into prominent families, they already were above me. However, in that social context, they were right and I was wrong. The reason: the social elite define who’s above, and who’s below. My failure to understand that infuriated them – most probably, in a good way.<\/p>\n Colleen was the leading edge of the social elite: she was the first person I met at the club. On a cloudy April day, she showed up out of nowhere, telling me I couldn’t set foot in the deserted tennis courts because I wasn’t a member. She was 13 or 14, but might as well have been 43 or 44. Rules – especially social rules – and gossip sustained her.<\/p>\n I’ll continue – this is a pleasantly long story:)<\/p>\nJack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self-tutoring about the past and people from it: the tutor recalls Colleen. To begin this story, here are some facts: Her name wasn’t Colleen: to protect the the innocent, no-one’s real name is used in this account. This story doesn’t …<\/p>\n