Mem'ries

At girls' night last night there was a discussion about junior high. One of the moms was dealing with a daughter who is really struggling with eighth grade. Someone asked the question "Would you ever go back to junior high?" and the table erupted with adamant "NO WAY"s and "NEVER!"s and groans... I didn't speak up, because while I have no desire to actually go back in time, if I had to pick a time, junior high wouldn't be on the bottom of my list. In fact, it might even be quite high as far as times I would enjoy returning to. Now college, no way. I felt SO lost on a huge campus and hated the feeling of being completely anonymous. After growing up in a place small enough that you knew and were known by everyone, college was overwhelming. Plus, I had a huge chip on my shoulder about not being able to afford the small private college I had dreamed of attending. No, please, Time Travel Gods - don't ever send me back to college. Junior high, though, I'd do.

I was fortunate enough to go to a small country school that had grades K through Eight. In Junior High, you moved to the Upper Hall - that glorious advancement where you switched classrooms and learned from eccentric, even notorious teachers. The Upper Hall was full of dark stained wood, stairways and the smell of musty formaldehyde. There, I experienced Mrs. Gates, the chain smoking English teacher who, in spite of her body odor and greasy hair, pushed me to read and learn to love great literature. Mr. Ferraro - with his closet containing a real baby in a jar and the secret passageway to Mrs. Gates classroom... and Ferraro Bombs - wads of paper he'd throw at students in the middle of stressful tests. Mr. Bernie - the math teacher I had an incredible crush on, and Mr. Connelly - the totally geeky social studies teacher who LOVED junior high students - it just emanated from his every word and action. I loved being a student there. I flourished, succeeding at everything I tried - Advanced Band (first chair, clarinet), Student Body President, Honors... I was a big fish in a little pond who thought the world revolved around me. And there, it sort of did.

But I also loved being a friend there. Having gone to school with the same group of kids my whole life, junior high was our crowning glory. And I thrived within the safe walls of my community of friends. We had all been through years of crushes and break ups, fighting and making up, learning and field tripping and laughing - and now, we ruled the school. I was popular. Secure. Confident. I honestly don't remember the struggle I hear others mention whenever the topic of Junior High comes up. I was comfortable in my own skin, sure of myself, and ready to take on the world.

I'm not sure what happened between then and now... except that God has done much in my heart. Real life is nothing like the cocoon I went to junior high in. Friends you've known your whole life? VERY unusual. Popular? I don't even know what that would look like. Confident? Nah - not so much anymore. Secure? Only in God - cause circumstances are a sandy pit of constant change. Comfortable in my own skin, I'm working on, and think I'm doing okay there... but in general, I don't have a tenth of the chutzpah I had in junior high. I'm sure it's all part of God's work in me - because for all the good things I was back then, I am now ten times more humble, teachable, loving and dependent on Him.

But yea, I'd go back. Just to hang with Lana and Monte and Greg and have a maple bar in the cafeteria and torment Mrs. Uhlbrand in the library - sure. I'd go back. In a heartbeat.