The preppie life cycle

Now I will describe the preppy life cycle. Every prep lives essentially the same life, from birth to death, and so do his children and his children's children. It's all for the sake of making sure nothing ever changes.

Birth
Shortly after birth, preppy children are given silver baby cups engraved with their name, sterling silver teething spoons, and silver rattles. These items will never be used for their intended purpose, but put away in a drawer in the dining room.

Early Education
Preppy children are sent to private religious preschools, where they are taught the basics of their parents' particular protestant denomination (Episcopalian or Presbyterian) but never develop a devout faith. For preps, religion is mostly a family tradition and a source of moral guidance to keep people from misbehaving too much, and church is a social gathering place where preps can show off their best clothes and chitchat before and after, as well as a place to form little clubs and have informal suppers. Preppy children go on to attend the same schools as their parents where they socialize with other preppy children. If they attend a quality public school, they run the risk of making friends with minorities or lower-middle-class kids, so to make sure they socialize exclusively with the "right" friends, their parents send them to expensive after-school activities where other preppy parents send their own children, such as golf lessons, dance lessons (for girls), soccer teams, tennis lessons, horseback riding lessons, and swimming lessons at the country club or anywhere other than the YMCA or municipal pool.

Childhood & Adolescence
It is practically unheard of for a preppy child not to be classified as academically gifted. In public school systems, this ensures that they will only be socialized with other preppy children by attending advanced classes. Preppy children excel equally at sports, to help instill a jocular gregariousness and team spirit that will make them more popular in high school and serve them well in the future at cocktail parties. A preppy child's bedroom is always festooned with athletic trophies and academic certificates & ribbons. In the summer, preppy children hang out at the country club between trips to the beach house and a stint at an expensive summer camp (expensive to ensure that only other preppy kids are in attendance). In North Carolina, the ultimate preppy camps are Camp Seagull (boys) and Seafarer (girls - and prounounced "seefairuh"). Trips to the beach can last anywhere from 2-6 weeks at a time. In their teenage years, preppy children don't engage in too much rebellion beyond wearing rumpled clothing and unkempt hairstyles, and get into minor shenanigans such as drinking underage or skinnydipping at the club. It's common practice for preppy high schoolers to drink liquor from soda bottles in class. Preppy high school parties are held at someone's house nearly every weekend and center around the objective of getting drunk. There's always someone with an older sibling or a good fake ID to supply the booze, and sometimes parents supply the alcohol in hopes of securing their children's popularity. Preppy teenagers never get into legal trouble because they are too smart to get caught. Preppy teenagers frequently drive drunk, but never get caught because cops don't patrol preppy neighborhoods, which are made up of interconnected residential streets, allowing sloshed motorists to avoid the main roads where the cops do patrol. Some preppy teenagers take menial summer jobs at the behest of their parents, who want them to learn the real value of a dollar. Often these jobs are in the same town as the beach house, where the preppy teen lives all summer. Preppy high school students participate in multiple extracurricular activities (including SADD, ironically) in order to pad their college applications, and have the free time to do so because, thanks to their privileged circumstances, they don't need to take part-time jobs during the school year. This, combined with a history of generous alumni contributions from parents and excellent GPA's, guarantees that preps will go to their choice of classic preppy universities (for North Carolina preppies, these include UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, Wake Forest, Hampden-Sydney, and Clemson).

College
Preppy men attend college for different reasons than preppy women. Preppy men pursue a degree that will land them in a career that pays well and doesn't require manual or outdoor labor. Whether they actually enjoy the work is immaterial; the purpose of a preppy job is to provide for a gracious lifestyle on nights and weekends. With the exception of fine arts majors whose parents will supplement their dismal future salaries, preppy men study law, business, finance, or medicine. If they are directionless and earn a useless degree such as history, psychology, or communications, they will go on to get a realtor's license and sell houses. Preppy women, on the other hand, pursue a meaningless liberal arts degree with the real purpose of attending college being to find a suitable preppy man to marry. Both sexes join fraternities & sororities, usually the same ones their parents joined. The thought of choosing not to go Greek blows a fuse in a preppy's brain; it simply doesn't happen. Preppies usually quit wearing their Greek-letter t-shirts and baseball caps when they get married.

Sex, Love, Marriage, and Reproduction
Premarital sex for high school preppies is usually performed under the influence of alcohol with people they've known since kindergarten and not discussed afterward because their families know each other. Preppy college men sleep with with women they wouldn't consider marrying - the whole madonna-whore complex - and preppy college women engage in alcohol-fueled one-night-stands with fraternity members.

Preppy women are raised to get engaged in college or shortly thereafter, preferably to a preppy man who is still a struggling young attorney or poor medical intern, which eliminates the appearance of gold-digging. Whomever she chooses, his family is likely to be somehow connected to her own through friendships or business connections. The couple is probably not deeply in love; it's more like they're good friends with compatible genitalia. Preppies get married when they find someone who can stand them, who fits in with their families, and will provide a lifetime of stability as well as a guaranteed date for all social functions. Preppy engagements and weddings follow Emily Post to the letter, strictly adhering to her guidelines for announcements, invitations, and festivities such as bridesmaids' luncheons and rehearsal dinners. The couple's gift registry always includes a fine china pattern, an everyday china pattern, and a sterling silverware pattern. At a preppy wedding you'll see among the guests a sampling of the local power elite: influential attorneys, judges, legislators, and possibly congressmen abound, as well as business leaders. First they get the ceremony out of the way, a very somber religious affair, and then it's time to par-tay. The D.J. spins the couple's favorite tunes, and in North Carolina, shag music is required by law. Two hours into the reception, you're sure to see a slew of sweaty, liquored-up white people gyrating around on the dance floor and possibly a few bridesmaids sneaking off to make out with groomsmen.

Once the couple has been settled in for a year or two and the husband finally makes partner or finishes his residency, it's time to pop out some preppy children and buy a large house in an old neighborhood where other preppies live. Pregnancies are regarded among preps as the greatest miracle since the harnessing of fire, and multiple parties are thrown for the expectant preppy mother, who spends her days poring over every book she can find about pregnancy, buying expensive maternity wear, and shopping for strollers that cost more than some people earn in a week. Some first-time expecting preppies claim they'll go back to work after giving birth, but always quit their day jobs. The new mom buys an SUV if she doesn't already have one, then joins a couple of charitable organizations where her preppy female friends with children volunteer. Most of their activities involve organizing parties with raffles where they drink wine, gossip, and talk about childrearing. If childbearing has not occurred by the third year of marriage, the couple's mothers, female friends with children, mothers' female friends, and grandmothers will turn on the pressure full blast. Preppy reproduction is nearly unavoidable, and sometimes occurs only after spending thousands of dollars on fertility treatments. Adoption is practically out of the question; the preppy bloodline must remain pure. Once the children start to arrive, the whole process I've been describing is repeated once again for a new generation.

As the children grow and repeat their parents' lives precisely, the mother spends her days shuttling the children to school and activities, instructing the maid, organizing charitable functions, and taking the children to the beach house in the summer. The father works his life away, gradually earning promotions until he reaches the top of the workplace, or close to it, and lives his weekends to their fullest with cocktail parties and beach trips.

The Autumn Years
Preppies tend to retire before age 60, having built up significant retirement funds through a combination of inheritances and shrewd investing, and rattle around for a while doing whatever they feel like. The ideal exit for a preppy is a quiet, dignified passing in one's sleep at the beach house with a fully functional body and mind. Some, however, need extra care, and move into expensive retirement homes populated by other elderly preppies. After passing, a preppy is buried in a family plot, surrounded by other preppy families' plots.