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.