At that awkward age
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
This week’s question:
SMITH is stuck on Stuck in the Middle. What’s your most vivid middle school memory?
Next week’s question:
John Sellers’s Perfect From Now On tells a life as the sum of indie-rock influences. What was your first live concert like?
What I remember vividly is getting ready for dances. (Three words: all girls’ school.) It was like getting ready for our own weddings. The process would begin midday with Nair, despite the fact that our monogrammed sweaters (7th grade) and parachute pants (9th) weren’t going ANYWHERE without us. The Washing of the Hair took hours, as in our mothers’ day, culminating in the wisp-ing of the wispy bangs. Outfit selection had of course begun weeks earlier. Three other words: Love’s Baby Soft. I was rarely asked to dance, but the ritual never changed. Hope, like the wispy bang, sprang eternal.
Sometimes I think about how cool it would be to be famous. I picture myself on Conan O’Brien, charming him with witty anecdotes about our mutual hometown of Boston. And then I remember that my middle school yearbook exists, available to any producer with a warped sense of humor. If Conan got ahold of my middle school yearbook, he would find out about my childhood taste in music. (Two words: Paula Abdul.) And then I would obviously have to climb into the tub with my 20-year-old boombox and commit suicide. Of course, there’s always Option B: Out myself as a dork on the Internet and beat imaginary enemies to the punch.
Adam’s spiky gelled mullet, Poison t-shirts and casual references to his sexual experience clinched my sixth-grade crush on him. I’d just moved from a small town to a city where Eazy-E blared from the bus and all my friends had kissed. Kissing Adam would cement my entry into this new social stratum, but I was terrified: How did the tongue thing work, anyway? In a rare moment of classroom privacy one day, Adam pushed me into a closet and shoved his tongue in my mouth. Shocked, I froze — and immediately knew our romance was over. “When it’s the right guy, it’ll come naturally,” Mom reassured me. (In eighth grade, the right guy came along, and it was beautiful.)
Music camp. My first relationship. After three days, I decided it was too overwhelming to learn the viola part to a Mendelssohn quartet and also worry about when to hold a boy’s hand, so I broke up with him hours before Saturday’s dance. I decided to celebrate my single status and attend the dance, but through the window of the Recreation Hall I caught a glimpse into the Game Barn, where my ex sat having a mano e mano conversation with his counselor. He looked miserable. Miraculously, he’s one of the only summer camp friends I’m still in touch with.
The summer before 8th grade I attended a musical theater workshop. I was one of the youngest kids, but I was tall, and in our production of Alice in Wonderland: The Musical, I was cast to play Alice when she was big. The shortest girl in the class was cast as small (normal) Alice. We looked absolutely nothing alike. She had short blond hair. I had long brown hair. I wore glasses. She did not. So when Alice grew she also developed a vision problem. I abandoned acting shortly thereafter.
The name-calling started the first day of 7th grade. I was new to the school; and very shy and fat and awkward. Chris O. and his gang of thugs made homeroom unbearable.
I endured his torture all year but on the last day of school, had my revenge by breaking off a pencil point into his locker keyhole then adding a squirt of Super Glue. The locker can only be opened by having a janitor remove the door from the hinges. It takes time to do this…
In eighth grade, the untouchables and I ate lunch in the vestibule outside the girls’ restroom. One day, for reasons unknown, the leader decided that I was a lesbian. They had held a meeting and apparently, I was out, in more ways than one. Beyond being crushed that my “friends” had rejected me en masse, I spent the remainder of the year eating lunch alone and coming to terms with my lesbianism. These days,
I look on with envy at my LGBT friends’ seemingly superior relationships and regret not wearing purple in high school. Queer is cool. I wish I were.
Sixth grade—technically located in primary school, but middle school age: Kid doubted my mother was artist. Friend suggested I tell kid his mother was artist too: con artist. Kid threatened to beat me up at 3. I was scared. Shouldn’t have been. Kid hadn’t reached puberty yet. Told teacher, who said I wouldn’t get beat up if I’d say sorry. Twisted teacher logic; make victim apologize. Don’t remember if I did or not, but do remember not getting beat up. Probably because my mom was there. Kid’s mother may not have been con artist, but kid probably is today.
In eighth grade I had one friend. She knew her way around the lunch room and I was a hopeless reject who owned literally NO silk shirts. The time came for the annual student musical and I announced that I would be trying out. Seemed like an opportunity to finally be a part of something, and I had some kiddie acting experience. “Only losers do drama,” she told me. Shaking with the fear of being lame, I skipped tryouts. Turns out, little miss popular herself tried out, got a great role, and won the hearts of young and old. Damn.
In eighth grade, our history teacher lectured us about the evils of atheism. He then asked if any of us were atheists. Foolishly, I raised my hand. “Why do you not believe in God?” he asked. I whimpered that I didn’t see any evidence for it and, thinking the ethnic card might save me, that growing up in a Muslim country had showed me how religious belief is relative. “You’re not an atheist,” he said. “You just think you are. Atheists are selfish. They think that they could create the world on their own, without God. You should read the Bible.” “I have,” I said. (I liked all the gruesome stories.) “Read it again,” he struck back, and never spoke to me again, except to randomly note on a couple of occasions that I was “selfish.” For some, crossing a teacher might’ve been a badge of honor; but he was also the football coach and our most popular teacher, so my godless protest only made me a bigger dork.
In seventh grade I threw a cream pie at Jeannie Thurber, who had stolen my best friend Lupé’s boyfriend. Lupé wanted vengeance and I was the designated hitter. So, pie in hand, we stalked Jeannie during lunch one day. I finally got a clear shot and flung the pie. Pies, however, are not very aerodynamic. The pie hurtled through the air, turned back like a boomerang, and landed right in the cleavage of the toughest girl in school, Rita. Lupé and I ran like hell. I was so frightened I didn’t even look back to see if Rita and her gang had seen me throw the pie. But I was clearly guilty: I was the one with whipped cream on my hands.
In eighth grade I shared a couple of classes with a boy named Mark, who had what we now call Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism in which the person can’t read social clues, has trouble distinguishing humor from seriousness, and can’t stand loud noises. Mark was fascinating. A fire drill would send him running out of the school screaming and waving his arms. On one memorable day, a cruel kid said “Hey Mark, the sky is falling.” Mark ran under a desk, covered his head, and screamed. I found that amazing. I should also say that Mark was the secret weapon on our math team (he was a math savant), and when I Googled him not long ago, it looked like things had worked out OK for him. I’m so glad.