May 30, 2010 -“The Breakfast Club”

Almost forty days and forty nights after my last attempt to restart my blog, I am going to try again. If at first you don’t succeed try, try again. (Heck, new month-new effort.)

Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about one of my generation’s (that would be Gen ‘X’ not ‘Y’) seminal movies, “The Breakfast Club.” Sure there are others, but let’s face it, if you are in your late 30s or 40s right now, then you probably saw a few John Hughes movies before you were eighteen! The Breakfast Club continues to be a classic because the issues presented in the movie about social class and acceptance remains hot topics not just for high school students but adults of all ages.

The reason my mind keeps wandering back to John Bender and the gang from the fictional town of Shermer, Illinois is that life, you see, is high school. My theory has always been that EVERYONE can personally relate to one or more of the characters. (Yes you can conduct the same exercise for the characters in Star Wars too. And no, everyone can’t get to be Han Solo either.) Interestingly enough, when you live overseas in a somewhat artificial (one might say surreal) environment, you might as well have stepped into a time machine and been transported back to those four fun-filled years at High School.

Now don’t get me wrong, I liked HS (at least what I can remember of it). But there is still no better lasting visual reminder of how human beings rationally, routinely and robustly divide into self-selected groups or cliques. Admit it; it’s all right there on display at lunchtime in the cafeteria. Here on “camp” it is absolutely no different. People cluster together around like interests – sports, scrapbooking, Scrabble, etc. But interestingly enough, the ties that bind them together are so strong, they rarely wander outside their immediate social circle for very long. The world, it seems, has very few “floaters.”

I have always liked “floating.” You get to meet more people, expand your horizons, and life rarely gets boring. Let’s remember that life is always about clever dialogue and interpersonal questions. The downside is, you tend to “connect” with people a little less, and unfortunately it’s harder to improve your skills/talents in each area, because you are simply unable to focus your energies in specific areas. (Of course it could be that you are simply out-of-shape and lost ANY athletic ability you ever had - RE: Softball)

So life = high school. Cliques = clubs or groups. What, if anything should be done about it? I have often thought a great research experiment about social situations would be to use an elevator, which is one place where people from different social groups could be forced to bond. My hypothesis is this; an elevator on a normal day has hundreds of people go in and out of it without exchanging a single word. But if that same elevator suddenly stops due to technical problems, well suddenly the group is mentally forced to start talking to each other. Consider a foreign expatriate camp a very large elevator.

Now back to our story…as anyone who has seen The Breakfast Club knows, the movie ends with the fade up of a terrific song – “Don't You (Forget About Me)" – by Simple Minds; the “club” going their separate ways (Will they ever interact again outside this artificial environment? Acknowledge each other in the hallway? Sit together in the lunchroom?); and a voice-over by Anthony Michael Hall reading the group’s letter or essay to Principal Richard "Dick" Vernon. The end letter is as follows:

Brian Johnson: Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong...but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...
Andrew Clark: ...and an athlete...
Allison Reynolds: ...and a basket case...
Claire Standish: ...a princess...
John Bender: ...and a criminal...
Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

My question to you is, “Which one are you?”