I only went to middle school for one year. This is because:
1. The year I started middle school is the year it became middle school. Before that, it was junior high and included grades 7-9. But the year I started, it changed to grades 6-8. So I already would have only gone to two years of middle school.
2. And then I skipped the eighth grade., so I only went to one.
I've always felt like this was one of the best things that could have happened to me. Middle school is really an awful place. Nobody knows who they are or who they want to be. Middle school is big enough that you can easily feel ostracized but not so big that there are enough varieties of groups for you to find your place in one. It's soulless, and encompasses the most awkward of the awkward years.
So, here's what I remember.
My locker combination! 1-37-29.
I never ever used the bathroom at the middle school. I went IN the bathroom, like in the locker room when we had to change for PE, but I never used the facilities. (I have since gotten over my fear of subpar public bathroom facilities, like in a big way. Probably has something to do with wading through diluted sewage to get to a pit toilet on the border between Syria and Lebanon.)
I got to study Spanish that year - my first time learning a foreign language! I loved it! I also took a class called Language & Culture that everyone made fun of at the time, but which obviously, now, looking back, affected me quite a bit. I even tried to google that teacher's name recently so I could write her a note saying so but I haven't been able to find her.
The school mascot was the Trojans, which was a continual source of amusement for so many of the boys at school when really, it should have been funny only once, IF AT ALL.
I hated PE so so so so much. It was a major source of anxiety for me. The changing in front of people, the forced participation in sports that I had no interest or skill in, the performing of said sports in front of my peers. UGHGUGHGHGUGHGHHG I dry heave just thinking about it. My strategy during PE was simply: SURVIVE. ENDURE. FORGET.
They had these chocolate cookies with white powdered sugar on them for sale in the cafeteria that were so good. Also bagels with cream cheese, which I got sometimes. Eating something as processed as a white bagel with cream cheese was pretty special for me because we never would have had such food at home.
I can remember all my teachers' names but I won't write them here since many are quite distinct.
Mostly I didn't like middle school very much. There was this other middle school across town (possibly closer to my house as the crow flies, but due to boundaries, not the one I attended). I always felt like that other middle school had a rosier image and a happier, more wholesome student population. I have no idea if that's true. It's possible they were just as lost as we were. Maybe that's how middle school is no matter where you go.
