Back to School Night: The Nightmare Returns

Tomorrow is back to school night, when parents are once again put through the nightmare of junior high--or "middle school" as they now call it.

We're corralled through the periods, moving from classroom to classroom, traveling through the schedule of the full day our little innocent tweens will experience. Yeah, innocent. Walking through crowded hallways of kids who glance at each other with that snide look meaning you're either too short, too fat, too thin, too ugly, too much like your older brother, too dressed like your mother, too scholarly, or too boring, it reminds one of how judgemental this age is...and how, sweet mother, I am sure as hell glad not to be a young teenager. (That was the clean version of the "too" list, by the way.)

I am creepingly aware of how differently our 13 year old "boy" talks around his friends than he talks around us. I have to wonder--how bad is it? Are his conversations like a roll from Stand by Me? I'm completely not ready for that.

Random things I remember about middle school:

• If someone lit a match in the locker room after gym class, the entire school would almost certainly go up in flames as a result of the hair spray saturating the air.
• There really was a shop class, where all of the druggies managed to hang out all day somehow. (Husband verifies this at his school more than 500 miles away from mine.)
• Everyday Mr. Gaffney sweat so much in front of his 8th grade civic class he had to use a paper towel to wipe his head.
• There were 2 lunch periods. I lived in fear at the beginning of each semester of getting stuck in one and having all my friends in the other.
• My newspaper teacher was a crazy biotch. She publicly executed me for misspelling the world upon as opon.

True, I'm only covering all the bad stuff. But the point is, sometimes, like tomorrow, I'll feel especially grateful to be past the Member's Only, jelly bracelet, zip your jeans on the side stage. Only, this time I get to experience it again but vicariously with slightly less information, like I'm fumbling around in the dark. And seriously, I know things have gotten much worse since my days at Carmel Junior High.