I found every last part of seventh grade bewildering. The hundreds of new students, the maze-like new campus, the rows and rows of lockers, having to choose classes and then needing to switch between those classes six times each day, the concept of “popularity” and its blatant yet slippery links to student government elections, and the hundreds of new students.
My classmates and I had been plucked from our isolated, comforting, elementary school nerdling pod, and dropped into a massive social cage match. I found myself on the sidelines, confused and lost, in a holding pen with the geekiest geeks from five other elementaries.
I might have been at a social disadvantage, but I was also not a nice kid. And I quickly compensated for my social disorientation by picking on the weaker and geekier.
So, please, feel free to tell me what an asshole I was. And be assured that, though decades of interim social conditioning led to improved impulse control and diplomatic skills, I am still a dick-at-heart -- though a generally kindly one.
Were you ever awful in middle school? Would you mind telling me something horrible that you did, so we can don twin online hair shirts? Or something someone did to you, so we can vilify them in absentia?
Iz has fully embraced the tween battle cry "it's not FAIR!!"
It's galling; both Seymour and I would have been spanked for such sassing and shrieking, plus, frankly, she is one of the most fortunate kids I know -- but that's my yardstick, not hers. Iz is looking at the world with the blinders of tween materialism, and can only see the many electronic holiday gifts her friends got and she didn't (we declared an electronics-free Christmas), the extra lessons they get that she doesn't, and the clothes they have that she doesn't. All absurd complaints from such a well-dressed, -accessoried, and -instructed girl. Absurd, to us.
Her dissociation from reality can be jaw-dropping. Last week, over breakfast with Leelo's beloved Godmother Hayley and her fiance Pablo (we love him!), Iz started grumbling over all the attention her exuberant, extroverted younger sister was getting. She said that she felt like the older brother in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, when his younger sibling goes on TV.
"Really?" I said, "I can totally understand. Because the Fourth Grade Nothing got the lead in his school play, too? And won the class spelling bee for the fourth year in a row? And got invited to join the winter select soccer team?"
She glared at me before laughing reluctantly, and that mostly for the benefit of our guests. A few minutes later she was mooning about a friend's iTouch.
I waffle between painting a scarlet "I" for "Ingrate" on her forehead, mild murmurs of understanding (I remember the all-consuming, illogical wanting of middle school), and strapping her in a Clockwork Orange-style chair until she finishes reading the Afghan Women's Writing Project's I'm For Sale; Who Will Buy Me? and watches this video about life in North Korea (via Laura Miller's Salon.com review of Barbara Demick's book "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea"):
The only one I'll actually do is occasionally -- very occasionally -- commiserate with her, because the other two options wouldn't be, well, fair (though, hmm, if I photoshop the I onto her forehead and post it on Facebook, she'll never know...). I'll tell her about the Afghan woman's anonymous testimonial and see if she's interested, and let her watch the North Korea movie if she wants to (she was intrigued by Siam Riep's North Korean nightclubs, and the almost-exclusively South Korean clientele's obsession with forbidden North Korean contact). Otherwise, she's not mature enough to be hit upside the head with or absorb true injustice -- she emerged from her week in Cambodia thinking only of its beaches, temples, and foot massage parlors; the poverty, corruption, and minefields didn't register. At all.
I'll continue to remind her to think positively, to focus on all the things she does have, while firmly reminding her to treat people the way she wants to be treated, because neither her father nor I will tolerate being yelled at. I have faith in her; she's a passionate and empathetic kid underneath all the fabricated tween gloss, and she'll be able to grasp what unfair really means, only too soon. It's okay to let her be selfish for a little bit longer.
