Algebra sucked, study hall was a blast, have a great summer and see you next year!

I graduated high school in 1993. I wasn't a popular girl. I wasn't part of the nerd herd. I wasn't even what you would call a jock (I was in track, but not gung-ho about it). My years in high school were not what I would call "the best years of my life". So, it was with supreme happiness that I graduated, and left all the bullshit behind me.

Some people, however, are unable to let it go.

You know the types. You may even work with some of them. Their glory days, the pinnacle of their existence, resides within the halls of some high school somewhere. They were usually popular, big man on campus. Everyone looked up to them. Everyone wanted to be them. They were the sun, and everything else were just little peon planets that revolved around them.

After high school, they tried to keep that momentum going, but learned pretty quickly that they were now little fish in an extremely large pond. No one cared that they had been homecoming queen, or quarterback. They became average people, like everyone else. And they hated it.

But then they found jobs, and because water rises to it's own level, they gravitated towards the people who were most like them. Lost souls still trying to recapture the glory of their youth. They travel in packs, joined at the hip at work in their own little cluster, usually talking about all the fun they had over the weekend. Loud enough for other people to hear and remind them that they didn't belong in the self-anointed popular crowd. Congenial only to their own little peer group, cold and aloof to everyone else. You might get a couple outside people who get sucked in, having never known that kind of inclusiveness before, they are now part of the the "cool kids"...some twenty years later.

It's pretty pathetic when grownups behave this way. It speaks volumes about the person when you realize that the best moments they ever had was during puberty. Not when they found the person they would spend the rest of their lives with. Not when they had kids of their own and experienced the joys of parenting. All their happiness can be tied to their high school days.

Up until now, I've been pretty fortunate to have minimal experience with, what I call, The High School Crowd. Sure, there were some immature types on the day shift, but I attributed that to the fact that they were still so young. Now, it would appear, that the Mean Girls have arrived on night shift. Rude to everyone but those within their circle. Unhelpful. Hateful. They make fun of everyone when they are out of earshot, for what they say, how they look, how they dress, or laugh at someone's wedding pictures. I'd almost bet money that these people were bullies when they were in high school. Being hateful just comes so easily to them.

At least if I am an asshole to you, it's because you did something retarded to a patient or left a mountain of work for me to do because you were to lazy to do it yourself. I'm an asshole, shit gets corrected, we move forward amicably and I will still invite you to my Christmas party. I'm not going to scoff at you because you got a promise ring. (Ironically, the nurse who was making the most fun of the ring just recently got dumped by her own boyfriend.)

It used to be, we had some pretty cool people who worked on my floor at night. We worked as a team. No cliques. No backstabbing. Just our jobs. It was a grown-up floor. We shared a genuine concern for each other. Now, mst of the cool people have moved on to greener pastures, leaving us with a couple assholes that are ruining the dynamic that once made us so great.

I made this realization this weekend when they worked together, and their actions caused an uneasy feeling on the floor. It would seem that I wasn't the only one who noticed. Another coworker was at the desk with me while the Mean Girls were sitting in a corner talking about some crap reality show that only teenagers watch, when my coworker quipped, "I feel like I didn't make the cheerleading squad." Even the day staff has taken notice, and they don't notice anything.

I graduated high school in 1993, and I left it there, only to be revisited at class reunions when gathered with classmates I actually liked, and we reminisce about how retarded we were. This is one of the many reasons that my time on my floor is limited. Soon, all the good nurses will be gone, and all that will remain are the Mean Girls, and a unit that will become known as Telemetry High School.