Seventh Grade

I cracked up in my coffee yesterday reading Melanie Shankle's post about her daughter's first day of seventh grade. There are so many funny lines in that post that I won't bother quoting them all and instead, I'll tell you to just go read the thing for yourself.

Melanie lamented her own unfortunate haircut in her seventh grade year. And she's just a bit older than I am, so the photo she so bravely shared matches hair many of my classmates sported in middle to upper elementary.

By the time I got to seventh grade, poofs and perms were all the rage.

I'm not sure what seventh grade looked like in your school system, but in ours, it was the year you fell to the bottom of the seniority totem pole once again. Sixth grade found you at the cool end of the school hall, able to reach the top of the short lockers with no issue, and every single soul in that school completely beneath you in the social spectrum. You ruled the playground, the lunch room, and pretty  much everything in between.

And then came seventh grade, where playgrounds became extinct, lockers grew another foot or two, and you were suddenly the uncoolest of the uncool, wrestling your combination lock and debating which reprimand to swallow: running in the hall to beat the five minute passing period or sliding into your seat after the tardy bell rang. You had to tote your books to class and take all of them home at the end of the day to pilfer through the mound of homework demanded.

So it was understandably rough to take your place at the bottom of the totem pole and get up in time every day to curl those poofy bangs and shellac them in Rave 4 hairspray.

I have a sampling of my own seventh grade year that I'm sure I'll later regret posting on the internet.

Not surprisingly, I enjoyed food. Apparently a LOT.

Sometimes the poof works against you because when you pull the rest of your unruly hair back, the poof is ALL you can see, giving you kinship with the children of the Cabbage Patch. {And a special shout out to the neon shirt and the plaid shorts. Oh Ryan. Why didn't you love me then? I just don't understand!!!}

Speaking of neon - there were also the neon sunglasses. Groovy.

That hair! Flat irons hadn't been invented yet, my hair was too thick for most ponytail holders to corral it, and it had a wave all its own. It was down to my waist and just a mess. A thick, unruly, wavy, tangled mess.

Seventh graders, you've come a long way from the days of yore, when seventh graders were plagued with poofy bangs, unruly hair, neon shirts and the makings of a unibrow. We weren't poised like you are today with your miniature model clothing and your corralled tresses.

Seventh grade is still yucky, I'm sure. I know you couldn't pay me to return to it. But surely you're a step ahead of where we were. You probably don't even have to remember a combination. What is it now? Thumbprint recognition?