Mind Your Own God Damn Business

I previously thought that I had pretty good perspective on being a middle school student. After all, I spent two year of my life in the middle of it.

As I spend more time with them as an outside observer instead of an active participant, I’m beginning to realize that what little I thought that I knew about being 12 from when I was 12 was badly skewed and misinterpreted by my tiny undeveloped brain.

First of all, I’m glad that I was a boy, and never a girl. Boys fight a little bit and then once pecking order is established, everyone is more or less cool. Girls are evil, vicious little fucks. They do weird, mean, spiteful shit to each other, and once pecking order is established, they keep doing weird, mean, spiteful shit. They will dedicate hours and hours of time to developing careful, elaborate schemes to do mean things to each other. It’s like watching hyenas fight over the remains of a carcass.

Second of all, it takes a completely different skill set to sit at the top of the social chain in middle school than it does anywhere else. It helps to be a talented athlete and good looking, which is pretty much the same as any age group, but whereas before and after middle school it really helps to be friendly, outgoing, funny and charismatic, in middle school it seems to primarily be about sticking out as little as possible and really lashing out at anyone that does in any way, shape or form. It’s funny, because one of the questions that I had them answer on a quiz about a book we’re reading right now asked them to compare and contrast the importance of conformity in our society and in the book’s society, and everyone was vehement about the importance of individuality in ours. Yet every time that I watch them interact, there’s nothing more terrifying to them than wearing a piece of clothing that someone might consider uncool, or liking a band that someone else doesn’t like, or even thinking that a joke is funny if someone else doesn’t. What’s really important to get ahead in social circles in 7th grade is to be completely unimpressed with anything that anyone says, roll your eyes and say “oooo-kay….” a lot and make that face where you raise your eyebrows and half smirk to make that expression that either says “I can’t believe that you said something that stupid!” or “I’m pushing out a pretty serious log right now.”

So why don’t I quit and work with students that I consider human?

First of all, they pay me.

Second of all, even though some of the kids are epic d-bags, some of the kids are awesome.

I have one that has the most devastating case of ADD that I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s constantly out of his seat doing the robot, yelling “ballin’!” and singing songs that he’s too young to know. I can tell that he doesn’t want to flip out, but he just can’t quite control himself. I know that I should be yelling at him and telling him to sit down, but when I look up and he’s popping and locking around the room singing “Blinded by the Light” and screaming “Ballin’!, I end up cracking up while I’m trying to pretend that I’m angry.

Yesterday he and some other kids were talking about bear attacks, and I pointed out to them that macing a bear is more effective than shooting it. “You know what’s more effective than that?” He asked me. “You jump on it’s back, wrap your arm around it’s neck, put it in an arm bar, ‘pow’! ‘pow’! punch it once or twice in the kidney and then ‘bam’. Problem solved.” The more that he discussed it, the more excited he got to actually wrestle a bear. I had to spend 30 minutes after that reading a few chapters from a very somber book to the class, and I kept having to bite my lip to keep from cracking up imagining a 12 year old neutralizing a bear with his bare hands.

THAT is what gets me out of bed in the morning.

BALLIN’!