Moving up

On middle school and other horrors

I have a vivid memory of the day I began to dread leaving elementary school for middle school. I was out on the field during recess, playing tag with my classmates. It was a beautiful spring day — blue sky above, green grass below, just enough of a chill in the air still so that it felt really good to run as hard as you can and get your blood pumping.

I was good at tag; or, I should say, I was one of the faster kids in my teeny-tiny grade school and could outrun all but a couple of the kids. After five years of playing tag on this bumpy field, I had become confident, even cocky, taunting my opponents and then slipping away at the last second.

As I ran around the field on that spring day, a sense of desperation grew in me, thinking that the feelings of mastery, exhileration, and belonging I felt were about to evaporate. Instead, I knew, I would be entering a brand-new social dynamic, where my classmates would criticize my clothes for not being trendy, and all anyone would want to do is talk about which boy was cutest. No one, I was sure, would want to play tag with me.

“I don’t want to go to middle school!” I proclaimed out loud to anyone who would listen. “Middle school is dumb!”

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In many ways, I was not wrong. Middle school was, in fact, dumb. There were, in fact, cliques of popular kids whose whim could make or break another kid’s day. Kids were mean to each other in new and unprecedented ways that went largely unchecked by the adults around us. Complaining about it usually drew responses like, “Well, boys will be boys,” or “You girls need to work it out.”

Just like my sister before me, I experienced pangs of longing for expensive brand-name things that my mom told me were too expensive or impractical (those big huge Esprit shoulder bags that always ripped by the end of the school year; Guess jeans).

At the end of my seventh-grade year, my friend and I decided to start a rumor that we were Satanists to “freak out” our classmates. This ended up being a bad move and one that I do not recommend. But that’s a middle school story for another day.

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My 11-year-old, who is moving up to middle school this fall, reads a lot — just like I did when I was a kid. The books I read about middle school in the 1980s told pretty similar stories. There was a lot of girls striving to get boys to like them; a lot of makeovers or shy people learning to speak up.

I was uncomfortably aware, when I was 11, that I was surely the “before,” not the “after,” in one of these makeover stories. I lobbied hard to get contacts before middle school, especially after my bus driver (thanks, Gene!!) told me that “Guys don’t make passes at girls wearing glasses.” (Who says that to a kid in grade school!!)

The books my daughter reads about middle school are different — but she has noticed themes, too. Where I got the message that succeeding in middle school meant changing who you are, she has learned that middle school is the time when your friendships will change — when you and your childhood friend may suddenly, and unpredictably, head in different directions.

From Roller Girl to Real Friends, Four Eyes to Dear Friends, the stories these books tell are so familiar to my 11-year-old by now that she can see them coming a mile away. This is not exactly a bad thing, and I’m sure it’s grounded in reality: middle school is a time of both personal change, and changing social dynamics. But sometimes I feel a bit sad that stories about middle school, all these years later, still seem to be mostly cautionary tales.

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Earlier this spring, I attended at Parents Night at the middle school and sat uncomfortably in small desks and on cafeteria benches with the other moms, dads, grandmas and uncles to learn about what sixth grade was going to be like for our kids. I listened as my former neighbor reassured us that there was hardly any homework and that it wasn’t weird at all that the lockers are tiny¹ and that kids are supported and loved and challenged.

I have no reason to believe this isn’t true. In fact, I think middle school has transformed, dramatically, from the hellscape it was when I attended in the early 1990s.

My mom worked at my middle school² and often observed that middle school kids are SAVAGES who should be sent to a deserted island and left to fend for themselves so that no one else in the civilized world has to put up with their shenanigans. I think she has a point, but I also think that middle school has become kinder and gentler in recognition of this fact. It appears to be less a school of hard knocks and more of a place where teachers and administrators are fully aware of how ridiculous 11- to 13-year-olds can be, and better prepared to roll with it.

At Parents’ Night, the principal gave a nice speech that anyone who works in education is familiar with by now:. He asked us to agree that we wouldn’t believe everything our kids tell us about school, and in return, the school won’t believe everything the kids say about home. It’s a reasonable agreement; 11-year-olds, despite their other qualities, are not always reliable narrators.

I guess I can only hope that middle school, for my particular 11-year-old, will not be a hellscape, and no makeovers will be required³ in order for her to succeed. I hope she can hold on to some of the friends she has; that they will not all vanish into the wilds of the middle school halls, never to be seen again.

If you have any inspiring tales of middle school NOT sucking, I would love to hear them! Or if your kid is in the middle school trenches, solidarity is also welcome.

1. I am not convinced

2. Yes, sometimes that sucked in all the ways you can imagine, like when she called me “Chuck” or “Pickle” in the halls, or gleefully told me how she had gotten one of my friends in trouble. On the other hand, I could usually bum 50 cents off her after track practice to buy a raspberry ginger ale, which was awesome.

3. Although, she has already requested contacts instead of glasses, just as I did when I was about her age. Thanks again, Gene the bus driver!!