Junior High Drama

Blogreader,

Something special happened earlier this week. A friend of mine, a Mister Donald E. (W.) Quist, lend me a book entitled Stuck In The Middle: 17 Comics From An Unpleasant Age. It was a comic book about middle school. 17 comic strips drawn by 17 comic book artists about one of their own experiences in junior high. I snatched it up and read it in one night.

It was illuminating.

Suddenly, I was reminded of a unique world I had locked away within the folds of my memory for years: single-day (or, in some cases, single-hour) relationships, nihlistic (yet comical) feuds, strange friendships formed in light (or in opposition to) pre-teen politics. Good or bad, middle school is a special time, blogreader. I guess you could compare it to the 60s or Vietnam, in the sense that if you weren't there, it's really hard to explain it.

If someone were to ask me what middle school was like I wouldn't know what to say. I'd have to tell them a story to explain.

And that, in my opinion, is the best aspect of Stuck In The Middle: there is no commentary from the artist to explain a particular situation. Some actions didn't seem to have any reasons at all. At times the strip appeared to be just a collage of random images. Point A ending at Point B, but in the middle were thrown a bunch of random symbols, letters and numbers. In the end, the best way to understand the story is just to read it and accept it.

That's middle school.

It reminded me of something from my own experience.

It was 8th grade. School dance. I had just come out of 7th grade, which sucked something terrible. So, therefore, 8th grade was the COOL year. It HAD to be. I could feel it. I had JNCO jeans, a nice hair cut, cologne and new line of Rusty t-shirts.
At the school dance, I was trying to work up the courage to ask the cutest girl in school to jig it out on the floor. For the purposes of anonymity, let's call her Bristina Krellamy.
Hands sweaty, underarms underdeodorized, t-shirt overcolognated. I was still determined to ask her to dance, but song after song came on and I chickened out each time. I shuffled close to her during the "Macarena" and I felt confident for a while, until Busta Rhymes "Dangerous" hit and she disappeared into a fog of cool kids. I sighed and crept to the bleachers to consider another approach.
At that same time, another girl kept asking me to dance. Let's call her Rmanda Aybon.
I decided that if Bristina saw me dancing with Rmanda, it would make her jealous enough to be drawn into my manly mystique, all 4-foot-nine, ninety-three pounds of it.
Apparentally, Bristina didn't catch a whiff of the magnanimous bravado coming off me in enormous whafts and continued dancing with the guy who could have been (but probably wasn't officially yet) her boyfriend.
Near the end of the dance, one of my friends came up to me and said Rmanda liked me and asked if I wanted to go out with her. I said, "No." If I went out with Rmanda, it would totally ruin my chances with Bristina.
Eventually, the dance ended. My mom picked me up and I went home. Another chance wasted.
On Monday, I found out my friend had told Rmanda the exact opposite of what I had said. So now, I had a girlfriend.
It didn't last too long, but while it did, she was pretty cool. She gave me a Wallflowers CD for Christmas and bought me a soda during recess one time. I didn't get her anything, but that's simply because I was a cheapskate during much of my teenage years.

Blogreader, it's one of the more positive memories of middle school. No doubt, there are some stinkers and some that I'm sure aren't appropriate for public post. However, if you've got any middle school stories you'd be willing to share, please do.

Also, if you happen upon Stuck In The Middle, pick it up. You'll laugh, you'll furrow your brow and you'll nod empathetically. Maybe all at once.

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