Riding The Brakes: 30513 Memories: Middle School

I wore silk shirts and bell bottom jeans. I remember I had this really wide brown wrist watch band that I felt made me a bit cooler than I ever hoped to be without it. My hair combed left to right across the grain of my cowlick but I secretly wished parting it down the middle worked better. I wouldn’t attempt that look for years then when I did I reverted to the original way a short time later. I wanted my hair to be longer but my parents were determined not to raise a hippie. No matter the hair style, I carried a comb in my back right pocket at all times. Sometimes I wore a golden ID bracelet because that was just what we did back then. That whole world I knew then was busting open with CB radios, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em boxing robots, the Bicentennial, Meow Mix commercials and The Muppet Show. Throw in a little puberty and the difficult time known as middle school had arrived.

Our middle school had long been a high school known as West Fannin, home of the Yellow Jackets. Our county though built a new high school consolidating West Fannin with our cross county rivals, East Fannin. The two high schools then became middle schools. As during high school days, West Fannin’s students came from the schools in Epworth, McCaysville and Blue Ridge. So, for seventh grade, not only was finding your locker a major task learning the names and faces of new-to-you students and teachers was an uphill challenge as well.

I’m not sure how understood it was among us at the time how the lines of defining each other were being drawn. Most of the old friendships and alliances from elementary school would be tested with the possibility of new friendships and alliances. This would mean the way things were back in elementary school changed. The gifted seemed drawn to one another. The opportunity to play sports would define some. Others would be defined by their creative talents. Some would be defined by their smarts, and others, just by being, cool. Some of us struggled to know, much less accept, where we would land in all this chaos, hoping it was somewhere in the middle-not athletic, creative, smart or popular enough to be fully accepted by those at the head of the pack but somewhere ahead of those who came from circumstances they had little chance to escape. Maybe that is why looking over those times, it seems as full of as many uneven and awkward moments as it seems filled with really good times.

Each day was divided into six periods plus homeroom, lunch and a late afternoon recess. While we had changed class rooms going back to the fourth grade, middle school was a very different beast. One class could be on one hallway and the next class could be on the opposite hallway. You had to determine when you could go to your locker to get your books for the next class or make that tough decision that you just didn’t have time and would have to carry three classes worth of books to each class until you had enough time to get to your locker. Speaking of the locker: if you didn’t have a lock, you hoped no one stole anything from it but if you did have a lock you hoped you could remember the combination.

P.E. class was in the gym, that place where you were not allowed to wear street shoes onto the waxed, wooden floor. There, we engaged in games of basketball, volleyball and dodge ball. We ran laps. We lifted weights in the weight room. By the time P.E. finished and you changed your P.E. clothes back into your regular clothes, you just hoped the fifty cents you had for a Coke was still in your pocket not in the hands of some sticky-fingered thief who had rummaged through the pockets of your pants while you were on the gym floor trying to not look any less athletic than you really were.

Lunch was broken into two halves. This meant if your friends were in one class and you in a different one, you might see them at lunch time depending on which half you went to lunch. We had lunch cards that were punched when we went through the line to get our food. One of my favorite meals was vegetable soup with peanut butter sandwiches. I would always ask for no soup and two sandwiches. I ended up knowing a number of the lunch room ladies. I was related distantly to at least two of them and others were family friends. I would learn that the secret to their peanut butter sandwiches was mixing syrup into the peanut butter when they were made then refrigerating them. When I am patient enough now, I will sometimes do this. I also eat the vegetable soup now.

After lunch and before the next class period began, we were free to go outside to the cafeteria side of the school. Here you could find a number of basketball goals where you could participate in a pick-up game if you wished. Some hopped on skateboards during this time. Others stood around or sat around on the ground waiting for the next bell to ring. When that bell sounded, some might have to make a mad dash from the backside of the football field near the fieldhouse and visitors concession stand. Middle school survival code demanded not telling what what went on there but that statute of limitations ran out a long time ago. Sometimes it might involve a boy and girl searching for a place to lock lips. Other times it might be a group of guys who had vanished from plain sight to smoke a cigarette.

Middle school was where we began to chase some of our own dreams through our classes. We may have been intrigued by a book we had to read in English. Maybe math just clicked for some. Others found science worth investigating. We also had shop classes and home economics and business classes. It was also this place that introduced us to teachers and administrators we, for good or bad, referred to with such names as Barney Fife and Sharkey. No matter the problem we encountered many of us knew things would just be better if we were able to stop by the office so we could speak to the sweet Mrs. Arp or our beloved principal, Mr. Foster.

School ended every day at 3:20 PM. No matter where class was located, the entire student body went into full sprint to get to their lockers then to their bus. The buses were parked on the opposite side of the cafeteria and library in a giant U-shaped space between two wings of the school. Within a few hours, the place grew quiet then dark except for the night custodians.

It really wasn’t over though. Middle school was more than just the time we spent at the school house on Highway 5 between Blue Ridge and McCaysville. It was a new social scene that would include school ballgames and events that took place outside the regular school time. It might even be impacted by a night at the Starlite Roller Rink. Middle school wasn't about who we were, it became who others our age thought we all were. And, we were all changing. Girls began to look more feminine and softer. The voices of the guys grew deeper and hair began to grow in places it hadn't before. Girls began to notice guys and guys began to notice girls. Calling someone your girlfriend or boyfriend took on a different meaning than when that was done in second grade. At times, rumors would spread about a person or a couple. Even though you never had definite proof about such rumors, you tended to believe what you heard rarely seriously weighing the consequences of believing such because believing otherwise would likely set you apart from everyone else, and you could never find yourself outside that zone. Looking back, I am unsure how many of us really understood how what happened during these years defined folks, for good or bad, for the rest of their time in school, and, for some, their rest of their lives.

Looking back now I probably remember those times more nostalgically than I imagined I ever would. It was a time when so much of the world where we lived was growing more complicated while our own lives changed in ways some of us found hard to keep pace with. To me, the music and TV shows from then seemed better than today. I was though looking at the world then through eyes that had yet to experience much of anything about life. Maybe that inexperience helps explain the feeling of outright awkwardness I had then which still creeps in some today when thinking about that time in life. For good or bad, when I was in the middle of it, I was certain that the way things had changed into would be the way things would always be. I had a lot to learn about how things change.

Middle school playlist:

Blondie "Heart of Glass"

Elvis Presley "Way Down"

Gerry Rafferty "Right Down The Line"

Robert John "Sad Eyes"

Debby Boone "You Light Up My Life"

Nicolette Larson "Lotta Love"

John Stewart "Gold"

Dire Straits "Sultans of Swing"

Randy Newman "Short People"

Toby Beau "My Angel Baby"

John Sebastian "Welcome Back"