I'm sitting in a wide hallway, engaged in one of my favorite worktime-downtime pastimes: observing student behavior while they're busy barely noticing me (adult camouflage). From where I sit, I mostly see the popular cliques - there are lots of them, of apparently different and very separate composition. I see the Cool-Kid couples, and that's what triggered this post.

What the hell is with the SUPER-possessive boyfriend-arm slung around the girlfriend-neck? Not around the shoulder, the neck. I'm watching multiple Hims literally corral multiple Hers. And these dudes are tall and long-limbed: all four times I've seen it in the last ten minutes, the boy could (and did) actually wrap his arm around so he was gripping the girl's chin in his palm.

Talk about your quietly repulsive school-specific cultural norms.