Middle School. I Don’t Miss It

I remember it vividly. I was encircled by my friends, dancing under a disco ball while the DJ blared Green Day’s, “Time of Your Life.” I wreaked of sweat and Bath & Body Works Winter Candy Apple, covered in glowing necklaces, completely sober but high on life. I remember looking around my circle of friends, soaking up the sights and sounds of my senior grad night, and thinking, “You’re going to miss this. You’re going to want this back.” Nearly twenty-one years later it’s still true. I would love to return to high school and do it all again. There are many seasons of life I’ve thought it couldn’t get any better. There are seasons I’ve wanted to hit pause and enjoy a while longer, seasons I wish I could return to and relive, just once. But you know what season I would never relive? Middle school. It was not the time of my life. I don’t miss it and I don’t want it back. Like, ever.

Remembering middle school requires accessing three years’ worth of awkward, and dare I say traumatic moments locked deep in the dark, repressed recesses of my mind. Three years in which nothing seemed fair: my changing body, my ever-evolving friendships, and my inability to read fashion trends correctly. I know I am not alone in this. I have yet to meet anyone who raves about their middle school experience. Even the popular kids didn’t know how good they had it at the time. Middle school was simply a right of passage we all had to muddle through and pray we came out on the other side. None of us came out unscathed.

For me, sixth grade was a continuation of my boy-crazy years. My walls were covered with Teen Beat posters featuring the finest tween boy faces of the 1990s. (Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Andrew Keegan, and Jonathan Jackson, just to name a few.) I had just recovered from my first heartbreak in the fifth grade. Stephen Canova, (the first boy to ever show me attention beyond choosing me for his dodgeball team), had told me he liked me as, “more than a friend.” He held my hand repeatedly on the playground, even kissed my cheek once, but then left me for another girl at the Outdoor Ed. Camp bonfire. I was humiliated. (As it turns out, Stephen is now a proud, openly gay man, so that takes the sting out of it considerably.)

Anyway, I jumped right into new crushes and new relationships as I charted the waters of Pleasanton Middle School (which was quickly acronymed to PMS, because things weren’t uncomfortable enough). My sights soon landed on Joey, a blond-haired, blue-eyed dreamboat who excelled in all things P.E. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be, but my eyes quickly drifted to Joey’s best friend, Clayton. Clayton and I had every class together. He had perfected the bowl-cut and he had a smile suited for a Colgate commercial. I relayed a message to him through a friend that I thought he was cute. The feeling was mutual. When you’re twelve, dating isn’t really a thing, but back then we still referred to a romantic relationship as “going out.” So, for several weeks, Clayton and I “went out,” and by that I mean we walked to classes together, called each other after school, and exchanged sentimental nothings. I still remember his Valentine’s Day gift to me; a small tin of homemade fudge and a pair of long, gaudy earrings that I can only assume were his mother’s cast-offs. I told him I loved him over the phone one night. I refused to hang up until he said it back. He stuffed himself under a desk and closed the door, away from the prying eyes and ears of his family, only to say in a barely audible whisper, “Ok, fine. I love you too.” We were idiots. Idiots who exchanged our first kiss (a real one, on the lips) behind the P.E. locker rooms one day, in front of all our friends. It was single-handedly the most awkward moment of my life up to that point.

I remember ending things with Clayton after a friend told me Clayton wanted to try a French kiss with me. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it was more intense than the innocent peck we’d exchanged before. I remembered seeing a TV show where two kids got their braces stuck together while kissing and I did NOT want that to happen to us. So, Clayton and I were no more. I cried about it for far too long. The summer after sixth grade I got my first period and my first salon perm, and things went downhill from there.

Seventh grade was filled with desperate attempts to fit in with the right crowd. If only I’d known what the right crowd was. My friends were a versatile bunch, but all landed somewhere in the “not quite losers, but not quite popular” category. My wardrobe shifted like the changing tides. I experimented with oversized grey sweatshirts and warm-up pants, Looney Tunes t-shirts, and rompers my mom picked up at the latest craft show in town. No matter how many trips to Mervyns we made, I couldn’t pinpoint what MY style was. I color-coordinated my braces for every holiday, offsetting whichever unflattering lipstick shade I’d chosen that week. My overgrown bangs did little to hide my cowlick, widow’s peak combo. I had one pair of jeans that I felt good in, and on more than one occasion I pulled those jeans out of the dryer too early just so I could wear them to school. They were still damp, causing my skin to chafe and I left wet butt prints on all my chairs. Did I mention I had a unibrow?

Eighth grade had me feeling like I’d finally come into my own. I’d made friends with one of the most popular girls in our grade. I was in the yearbook club. And after years of playing softball, I was finally blessed with a jersey color that was flattering to my skin tone. The movie, Clueless, had just come out and we all had new fashion standards to aspire to, thanks to Cher Horowitz. But no amount of shopping at Forever 21 could keep me in the good graces of my popular friends. A miscommunication over a science project led to weeks of drama, backstabbing, and relentless teasing. Tears and yelling during yearbook meetings forced my mom to write letters to my teachers, requesting grace over my hormonal storms of teenage girldom. After things calmed down a bit, an unfortunate accident in Home Economics class left me with a broken nose. The choice between letting a doctor fix it with a brace or letting it self-heal seemed like a no-brainer. I opted not to look like Hannibal Lecter and returned to school with a crooked nose and two black eyes. Teasing was commenced immediately. (To this day I regret giving vanity the upper hand, as my sunglasses haven’t fit straight on my face since.) This was also the year I decided to take my unibrow into my own hands. I didn’t own a pair of tweezers so I opted for the most practical choice; my mother’s pair of kitchen scissors. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Graduation from middle school was the biggest relief. I obsessed over what to wear to the ceremony. I found a cute black mini dress and wore nylons for the first time ever. My grandparents sent me a gigantic pink corsage to wear for the occasion. God bless them, but I was the only girl wearing one. After posing me in the front yard for a photo, my mother realized my dress was so sheer you could see my underwear in the sunlight. I quickly added a slip but fussed with it all night long. When we arrived at the school I found a group of friends to walk with while my parents found their seats. My corsage was itchy and pulling at my dress. I was already feeling insecure about my slip riding up when my friend pointed to my shoes and asked, “Are those new?” I looked down to find cardboard liners sticking out of my patent leather heels. My cheeks were on fire.

A few years after I married a youth pastor, I found myself serving as a camp counselor to a cabin full of middle school girls. There was a lot of drama, bickering, tears, and hurt feelings. I sat all the girls down and assured them that none of their trivial little problems would matter in a few years. I told them they likely wouldn’t even know each other after their first year or two in high school. (I assumed they’d find it as comforting as I did that the drama of middle school wouldn’t follow them forever. I was mistaken.) My little lecture completely backfired and instead of comforting them, I catapulted them further into emotional turmoil. They assured me they would be each other’s bridesmaids and they would marry their 7th-grade crushes, and I didn’t know ANYTHING about it. I retreated from the cabin as fast as possible, wondering what I had done wrong. And then it dawned on me. I’d forgotten what it was like to be in middle school. I’d forgotten that at the age of thirteen, your friends are your ENTIRE WORLD. I’d forgotten that even though your peers are petty and quick to betray, you take them back because it’s better than having no friends at all. I’d forgotten that at thirteen, I too was convinced adults knew nothing of my angst.

Now that I’m the mother of a middle school girl, I’ve been forced to unearth the memories long buried. I’ve blown the dust off the boxes of photos featuring my cringe-worthy haircuts and makeup mishaps. As I sift through them I’m asking God to fill me with empathy and grace abundant. I pray He doesn’t let me forget, as much as I want to, what it was like to be thirteen. Providence may not be spending every waking moment shopping the racks of Claire’s at the mall or categorizing her TeenBeat posters according to perceived boyfriend potential, and she may not be leaving lipstick on her mirror as she practices her kissing techniques, but she is immersed in a middle school world all her own. She’s figuring out where she fits in the diverse mix of bodies, personalities, and styles all around her. Already she’s carrying herself with more grace and confidence than I ever did, but I know she won’t come out unscathed. She’ll fuss and fret over clothes, boys, and dressing down in the P.E. locker room. She’ll cry over everything and nothing. She’ll roll her eyes at me and shrug me off just for breathing too close in her proximity. I’ll let her, because I’ll remember what it was like, and I’ll be waiting for her on the other side.