I know that it’s not Wednesday, the day that I said I would post every week, but this is just an extra that I wanted to write. Besides the fact that my post for the week on Wednesday was slightly lacking. So enjoy the extra post!
You know, right after middle school ended, people would ask me “Are you going to miss it?” (it referring to the school). And I’d unhesitatingly answer, just like several of my other classmates, “I’ll miss the people, but not the place.” But in just a little over a week, I’m starting to realize something.
First, I didn’t entirely understand what “missing the people” meant. I hadn’t fully realized that the people I’d come into daily contact with for the past two or three years would never be with me in the same context again. I’m never going to doodle in science again with Su. looking over my shoulder and offering encouragement, or sit in social studies between St. and Sa., laughing my head off and explaining to St. that becoming a con man wasn’t a worthy ambition and that he’d do better as a diplomat. I won’t join a table full of jittery teenagers at the end of the day on Wednesday, waiting for school to be over while sitting out the WIP period in the social studies room. And I won’t drift off to a far corner of the field during lunch time to have a spinning contest with A. and W. and P. and Su., which reminds me of that one time with St., who was determined to crash into everyone while spinning like a deranged weather-vane. I won’t sit down in English and apologize to P. after realizing that I took “her” seat, or apologize even more whenever my locker door banged into T.’s head, whose locker is right below mine. “Missing the people” means missing simple interactions with them, that weren’t planned but always expected.
The other thing I realized was that I’d miss “the place” too. Not all of it, but little parts of it. I won’t miss the echoing corridors that reverberated with running feet and shouting and locker doors slamming closed. But I will miss the abandoned tether-ball post that I used to swing around outside math class while waiting for the teacher. I’ll miss the oak tree in front of the library where I ate every day last year at lunch, and I’ll miss the couch in the social studies classroom where everyone quizzed A. on her knowledge of pop culture. I’ll miss the batting cage on the corner of the field where everyone met to eat cookies, and I’ll miss the blow-up globe that we all inexplicably wanted to bat around like a cat-toy. I’ll miss the English classroom where dancing club was held, and I might even find it in me to miss the illustrated alphabet that I used to stare at whenever I was bored in French. I’ll especially miss the Connections garden, with its quietness and rosemary and lavender bushes and the air that it was almost-but-not-quite forgotten by the world. Once again I’m finding that I’ll miss the tiny things, the things that I encountered for years and usually took for granted.
Memories keep coming to the surface of my mind, as if rising from unfathomable depths: the route we took on a bike-ride to Shoreline, the Shakespeare night where it was freezing and the music stand fell on top of me. The music stand, that night, fell on a lot of people. A. saying “quality is nothing – freight trains on the other hand…” after our teacher gave us a lecture on singing loudly and ignoring how we sounded. And how our English teacher always paused in the middle of her lesson and gave a look of absolute loathing out the window whenever the garbage truck went by. Speaking of the garbage truck, I’ll always remember how it drove down the driveway we were lined up alongside for graduation practice and everyone broke into applause as if the garbage truck driver was the president on parade. Little memories, big memories… they just keep coming and coming and coming at the most unexpected moments. One of my favorites is when St., a notoriously bad singer, was lip-syncing in the choir practices for the Shakespeare night and our English teacher gave him at least three compliments on his singing during rehearsals when, in fact, no sound was coming out of his mouth.
I realize that this is all very sentimental and very pointless. And I’m extremely happy, perhaps irrationally so, to be out of middle school and moving on to high school. But it pleases me to think that maybe my time spent in middle school wasn’t as horrid as I originally made it out to be in my mind. I feel no twinge of regret at leaving, no urge to cry whenever I see my yearbook lying around. But I’m glad to know that I’ll have some fond memories to recall when, someday far off in the future, someone might ask me “So what was middle school like?” And now that you’ve sat through my own jumbled memories, I’d like to hear a few of yours. If anyone would like to leave a comment talking about a memory they have of their middle school experience, I’d love to hear it! And if not, then it’s enough that you visited this page. Thanks for reading!
– Mara
We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they’re called memories. Some take us forward, they’re called dreams. – Jeremy Irons
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