Middle School

I was a middle school girl once and I survived. Barely. What little I recall of this unsavory phase is that it’s one of the more cutthroat and potentially traumatizing chapters of one’s life. I’ve often joked that if you can get through middle school, the ensuing years will be a cakewalk in comparison. I made it through, but I was scathed all right. I was a girl and girls are stealthy. They can also be calculating, manipulative, cold-blooded and cruel. Boys, I’m told, are another story. I had no brothers, so I have nothing to grasp onto, no memory shred of their experience save for the boys I hung around with and the scant few that I dated. They all seemed to be gliding though on a drama-less landscape, shooting hoops and eating pizza crusts off each other’s plates. That’s all I saw at the surface; from my view there was little strife.

Since then, I’ve learned through late night discussions with countless male friends and by watching Cameron Crowe movies, that boys are devastated by their hormones in middle school—nearly felled by a brutal combination of acne and desire. And now, I must watch my son be tortured similarly as I send him off. I see the heartache on the horizon, the thousand painful slights from girls, the sinking realization of what he’s not good at and embarrassed by. I can just make out the beginnings of the stress of social positioning; birthday party invites not forthcoming, vacant weekends spent in the company of empty hours.

I’m trying not to stress out on his behalf. An older parent, I have the good fortune to have forgotten most of my middle school experience—it was so long ago. I’ve given him a heads up about the swear words he’ll be blasted with in the school hallways. We’ve assigned a point value to the basics 1-5 with ‘crap’ and ‘sucks’ awarded “one pointers” and, well, you can fill in the rest. I’ve hammered the mantra, “Know your audience” at him for years, hoping that when this day would finally come, he would be mindful of who was listening when he, too, tried his hand at the color and occasional wicked delight of swearing. “Remember, you don’t want teachers, play date parents, grandparents or coaches ever hearing you use off-color language.” “Yes, mom.” He’s bored. He tuned me out at “Remember”.

But I continue because I don’t know how to stop. I think that maybe, just maybe, as I speak my words will turn to a gossamer silk, strong and resilient, and wrap themselves around him like a protective burrito, just his head poking out of the top. “And this is when people you know are going to start smoking cigarettes and pot and sneaking beers and trying their hand at kleptomania, and I’m not going to be there. You’re going to have to decide for yourself what kind of kid you’re going to be.” “Yes, mom,” he intones again in the same voice he uses when I ask him to put on a collared shirt for a holiday meal or put his napkin in his lap. He has no idea what he’s in for. And I do, and yet, I’m still sending him. Oh, what vultures lie in wait! Oh, what demons troll in the shadows! Voldemort aint got nothing on middle school. Thank goodness I remember so little.

I don’t even begin to visit the horrors that are girls in middle school. When I ask him what he thinks of girls at this point he replies, “Weird.” When I press him, asking how, he says, “They just giggle all the time and whisper and it’s so boring and dumb.” Right. For about another ten minutes, and then, whammo—he will be all consumed to the extent that he’ll lose his mind texting and his body to goodness knows what else and then the strings that keep us tethered to one another now will fray and break until we are two people living under the same roof, communicating in a one-sided morse code of mumbles and grunts. And then, he’s gone, I’m told until he’s about 26 years old. At which time he’ll be back and tell me all about it, his trip through the rushing rapids of puberty that started in middle school, with me pushing him off in his raft.

I want to hold him and apologize now, before he even gets there, tell him that I’m doing it for his own good and that I love him and know he’ll get through it, hopefully not too scathed, but he would just chalk that up to Mom is a Nutjob, a file already bulging. So, I let his biggest worry be remembering his locker combination for now, and, “I’m scared I won’t have enough time to switch classrooms.” I tell him he’ll do fine as if I’m not making him walk a plank. I tell myself to stop sweeping his hair on his forehead to the side. I remind myself that one of these days will be the last time he holds my hand possibly for a very long time. I hold my breath, I count to three, then I say a little prayer, and send him—to middle school.

Slow Food - Happy Meal

“Mom, can we please go to McDonalds more than like once a year?” “Sure,” I said, “we can go twice a year.” He shot back with, “How about once a month?” I countered with, “How about never?” I’m trying to instill in my son the notion that there is a world of locally run restaurants out there with individual menus and handmade curtains and that we should default to those establishments whenever possible. We should be supporting family owned businesses and eating healthier, possibly locally grown food. He doesn’t buy it; he wants the crappy plastic toy. But he doesn’t ask for much, so on a recent summer road trip up to New Hampshire I pulled into the parking lot of a McDonalds masquerading as a small local diner with its shingled roof and window shutters. My son had fallen deeply asleep so I woke him gently. “Sweetie,” I said, we’re breaking for lunch. I found a little family owned restaurant that supposedly makes a pretty good burger. I think you’ll like it.” His eyes fluttered open but the golden arches didn’t register until we were halfway across the parking lot. Then he threw his arms around me. “Thanks, mom!” “No prob, kid.” It was a happy meal.

Last week, on a seven-hour road trip to the Adirondacks my son knew not to mention fast food and I didn’t either. After forever on the New York Thruway, we wound along two lane roads for hours. It was getting to be dinnertime and the towns were getting smaller and more scantily populated, so when we ended up driving through Minerva, I suggested we turn around and try that place we just passed back there. “Are you sure?” he said. “No, but we’ll never know unless we try,” I said. “Looks friendly enough, right? There are cars in the driveway, which is a good sign, right?” He was dubious, which is his standard setting for all adventures with Mom, but didn’t hesitate.

Sporty’s Iron Duke Saloon was first and foremost a bar, populated with guarded, middle-aged folks who could have been extras in a Dennis Hopper biker movie set at any point between 1977 and 1989. The room itself was a large open barn plan whose walls and peeked ceiling were built with new-seeming blonde varnished wood. Beyond the cluster of bar tables was a pool table and then a single, large, family-style eating table. It had the feel of a roadhouse with lots of room for folks to stand around and, who knows, dance. On every inch of wall space was a tastefully framed photo or movie poster or magazine ad paying homage to the Harley Davidson motorcycle or rider. When the wall space ran out the decorator did what any enthusiast would do and covered the ceiling as well. All of it.

I asked if children were allowed to dine in. “Sure,” a friendly, grey muttonchop-mustached man with close-cropped hair and a black T-shirt and jeans answered, “C’mon in.” He smiled warmly and I blurted out, “This place is amazing!”

“It’s my place,” he said, “I’m Sporty. Welcome. I did it all myself.”

“Wow,” my son said. We sat down at the table and asked what he recommended for dinner. “Have ya had hog wings?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh, you’ve got to have ‘em.”

“Great, done. Plus a cheeseburger, thanks.”

My son and I got up from the table to take a closer look at Sporty’s shrine to Harley Davidson and the biker culture we’d stumbled upon. There was a lot to take in. Magazine ads dated back to the sixties, biker movie posters to the seventies. We spotted photos of a younger Sporty with a full head of thick black hair and a black bushy mustache with his arms around comrades standing in front of state signs reading Welcome to Montana, Arizona and California. There were mannequins showcasing early leather biker wear and a collection of vintage oil cans on a window sill. Along one whole side of the room was a cordoned off area where antique Harleys were parked with tags dangling from their handlebars giving the reader the year, make and model of the bike.

We were taking a selfie in front of one spectacularly patriotic bike, the sort that Evil Kinevil might have ridden, when Sporty walked up. I thought he would ask me not to take photos; I realized in that moment I should have asked first. Or maybe he was here to tell us our food was ready—my stomach was beginning to rumble. But it was neither. He lifted up the chain and offered my son a chance to sit on a bike with the American flag emblazoned across the gas tank. I snapped away as my son smiled then we both thanked him heartily for the privilege. Our food wouldn’t be ready for another fifteen minutes.

We wandered around and kept reading—it was an exhaustive collection. I wondered what folks would think if I ran out of room for art in my house and started to nail thrift store paintings onto the ceilings. A man in a sleeveless black T-shirt wandered over to the internet jukebox and punched in “You Shook Me” and “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” I peered out the back door and saw a well-tended fire pit. Beyond that twelve or so picnic tables dotted a freshly mowed green lawn. Circling the tables were eight or so individual guest cabins, freshly painted. It was a beautiful, peaceful setting. I imagined what fun it must be here at night.

Our food finally arrived and we bopped to the music as we ate. The cheeseburger and coleslaw were terrific but the hog wings were sublime. Two fist-sized hunks of dark, tender, pork meat nearly fell off our bone handles and we rolled our eyes to the heavens as we chewed. The sky turned lavender out the back door and the grass, lime green. Sporty shook our hands heartily as we said our thank-yous and goodbyes and invited us back for helicopter rides in September. The business card read, “Everybody Always Welcome.” “That was awesome,” my son said as we got back on the road. It hadn’t been fast food, but it was fresh, delicious and well worth the wait. It was truly a very happy meal.