Pink Think: “We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.” – Andrew in the movie The Breakfast Club
I am back in junior high.
I am waiting for my 5th grade son while his project is being judged for a science fair. Somebody tells us we might be done in a half hour. Which is a little disappointing because I want to go through the lunch line and “experience” junior high, American-style.
I went to junior high in the Philippines, you see, and I burn with curiosity. Also, it is “research” for my YA fiction.
***
In my ten minutes of people-watching at junior high, this is what I see:
Lunch and after-school detention room, with a boy sitting inside. Detention fascinates me because in my school, we didn’t have detention.
A teacher leading eight kids like a prison gang, barking “No, talking! Single-file, do you know what single file means?”
Makes me think of the movie The Breakfast Club. I knew kids like these where I went to school, the kids with the “bad” rep, regardless of what they do, they would always have that label. Do they even stand a chance? Why even try to be good? Bad or good, they were always interesting.
Boys congregated along the walls, roughhousing…
…and a junior high memory comes back to me.
There was a covered walkway between two buildings in my school, where boys sat along both sides. I called them “raters” in my mind because I dreaded passing them. I always felt like they were rating how I looked as I walked down.
I would have cast my eyes down as a junior high girl, but today, I make eye contact with some of the kids in the hallway. A girl gives me a challenging stare, a boy has a blank expression on his face, a boy jumps on another boy.
I wonder what they would remember from their junior high years.
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