Middle School

As I was leaving work today, my mind was racing. I wasn't thinking about work, rather I was absorbing the many stories I had just listened to from "This American Life." While I know my life hasn't been as interesting as say, the 80 year old man that had his home taken over by a host of prostitutes and drug fiends, or the 19-year old college kid that got labeled as a potential terrorist and was taken mistakenly to Guantanamo but I couldn't help but reminisce on my own life and wonder if it is even remotely interesting.

Sitting on the T, while trying to read The Geography of Nowhere, I started having flashbacks of childhood, trying to remember what it was like growing up. I'd be lying if I said I had an eventful childhood. For the most part I was sheltered from the world--limited to an hour of TV a day; no sleep-overs; rarely did I venture out of the house, even to go to the neighbor's across the street (granted there was only another child within walking distance of my house up until I was around 4 years old and then moved). The poignant re-occurring memory that kept popping up was this relentless social awkwardness that had plagued me through-out my upbringing, and probably still affects me today.

You see, I don't think I ever learned how to be social as a kid--especially since I rarely spent time outside of school with others. I had a couple birthday parties, and I still to this day don't really know how I managed to get people to come. But over all, I never fit in anywhere. Except maybe in Elementary School. Life was easy then. There were no cliques. As long as you weren't the dumb kid in the class (which thankfully, I wasn't), in a relatively suburban elementary school, you'll probably get along with a lot of people. There were no social pressures . . .

But then came middle school. Now, I know middle school is awkward for most everyone, so I won't try to say that my experience there was worse than any one else's. I went to Brown Barge Middle School. It was a magnet school, which you had to "get in to." On a side note, I haven't ever actually questioned how that ended up happening. I don't know if my parents some how applied or if I just got selected to go. Now Brown Barge was a special place . . . we didn't actually have normal classes or a normal curriculum. We had "Streams." And we had (I think) two of them....maybe three, per year. And each "Stream" had a theme attached to it--Dwellings, Flight, something having to do with Arts--I can't actually remember the ones I had aside from Dwellings and another in which I recall singing the soundtrack of Aladdin. The intent of the Streams was to teach typical subjects in ways related to the current theme of that curriculum. I think it worked to some extent, but I can't help but feel like it failed me in math, since I recall walking into a Geometry class in 9th Grade only to find that I didn't know what Algebra was.

In any case, I took my social cues from pop culture and television. I remember watching a lot of Meg Ryan movies with my mom and stuff like The Wonder Years on television. Now, a romantic comedy aimed at adults isn't particularly the best education for a middle school kid on how to pick up girls (in fact, it's not so great for High School, either)--but it was the best I had...that and Fred Savage. What I learned from these movies was that, girls just wanted someone to talk to... and if the guy was nice and sincere, then he'd end up getting the girl. It was fail proof. That's how they did it in the movies. Well, either that or you could save the girl's life, but I think even then I knew that was beyond my capabilities. So I tried to be that guy... I tried to just talk to girls. What the movies don't tell you, is if that is ALL you do, you won't hear the words, "I love you" coming from any girl you're pursuing--in fact it's a different three-word phrase that I would come to loathe: "We're just friends."

I spent a lot of my middle school years on the phone, just talking. Partly because I thought that's what kid's did, and mostly because my parent's didn't really let me go anywhere for fear that I'd be abducted, or somehow have life threatening injuries just by going on the slip'n'slide.

I probably didn't know any better, but I called people--a lot. I mean, every night.... repeatedly. Particularly girls I had crushes on. In fact, I called my first big crush, Gina, so much that her parent's actually revoked her phone privileges--which I only found out a few years ago when I had lunch with her in New York roughly 10 years later. I promptly apologized. Occasionally I still wonder what she's up to, consider e-mailing her, but don't, for fear that maybe she'll get fired from her job for e-mailing or something.