No one is cool in middle school. Maybe an exception to this rule has already queued up in your noggin, but let me assure you once more that no one is cool in middle school. I was perhaps ‘popular’ occasionally, but it may be more accurate to say I was simply well known. As well known as you can be within a middle school, that is. However, this does not mean I was cool.
A couple of prefaces. I’ve had a major glow up since then. In middle school, I looked like any other four foot tall Minecraft fan in 2016, with nerd glasses and a prepubescent face shaped like a cantaloupe. I’ve improved in appearance since then, at least I’d like to think.
I was also an extremely strange child. Since then, I’ve reformed, and these days I’m now a strange young adult. I’ll give you some examples. I led the conga line at the school dance and was photographed dabbing. With flash and all. You guys remember that old trend from a decade ago? I ended up getting my first phone in 2018; a crappy android. Soon I was arranging Snapchat stickers that looked like my face into digital shaped fidget spinners and posting it on my story because no one taught me the rules of social media.
I would talk out loud on the quiet bus in the morning, counting things I saw out the window, to the reasonable animosity of a boy named Brandon. I even developed an alter ego named Maza (my name backwards and glasses flipped upside down) who would speak in gibberish. In short, it was clear my bloodline wouldn’t be continuing as long as I acted like that.
I am still embarrassed to know that old me existed. Then again, myself today perhaps does not contrast so strongly with this old self when it comes to my constant imagination or extraversion.
Some of the unforgettable memories of middle school include the social movements I started.
In the sixth grade, I walked up to this boy named Leo and asked him if he wanted to join a ‘goat committee.’ To this day, I have no idea where this came from. The goat committee began as a shared google document, with students’ names in it. We added members and their rankings, pictures of goats sticking out their tongues, plans for recruitment to eventually take over the world, places for goat art, and a sort of rudimentary Constitution. This ‘goat committee’ was ruled by friend Lennie and I, as well as this girl we were friends with.
Dozens of members ‘joined’ the goat committee within days, and in response, a rival faction soon known to the entire sixth grade as the ‘water buffaloes’. Conflict makes things more exciting, of course, so we let the goat committee members act as spies within the water buffalo rankings.
Soon everyone was talking about it, and it got so far that the principal was asked if she was a goat or a water buffalo. Whichever side you were on in this meaningless cold war of 12 year olds became highly significant. We wrote goat anthems, folklore, and even a document for record keeping. Although the fad only lasted a couple of weeks, I’ll never forget it simply because of how bizarre it was and of the fact I was the ringleader of it all.
The second revolution I unintentionally spurred on happened in seventh grade when I became infatuated with this picture of a baby polar bear with its tongue stuck out. I remember waking up at 5:45 am in the morning before school and cutting out these trading cards I had printed. I had drawn different things on the bear’s face and assembled them into physical trading cards of numerous varieties and rankings, with legendary being the highest ranking. Looking back on this now, I haven’t changed at all in that regard. I would still most definitely wake up before the sun rose if some creative thought summoned me and I could not return to my slumber.
One morning, I remember sitting in art class pulling out my Ziploc bag full of amazing bear cards, and everyone swarming me. Everyone was interested; there was no narrowcasted curiosity. Athletic guys, popular girls, reserved art kids, band kids and teachers alike. Later, in science class, my friend Nick blackmailed me, saying that he would make his own bear card trading line with a copy of my cards if I didn’t hand over the legendary golden bear card. It worked.
These ‘amazing bear cards’ quickly spread like wildfire across the middle school, and I continued to produce more cards in new varieties. Other kids had suggestions for ideas for new cards, even willing to design them themselves. It became so bad that recess became an all out warzone over this ziploc bag I had full of cards. I remember rival factions of boys running across the grass, some trying to tackle me and steal the bag and others trying to protect me. All over a picture of a baby polar bear with its tongue sticking out.
That year, I also made a shared google document titled, ‘the apocalypse’ with pages and pages of GIFs of spinning oranges on it that I had found. These oranges had hands and feet and even a weird face. For some reason, a classmate shared the document with thirty people, including the band teacher. One of the boys it was shared with had this document open in class, and upon attempting to leave the document, his Chromebook oddly would not let him. I soon got in trouble.
I was called to a meeting with one of the faculty staff and the assistant principal, and they began drilling me on what this document was and why people were being sent it. I remember they had a computer out with the spinning bipedal orange on it so that it resembled in retrospect, some sort of FBI interrogation. I cannot remember the conversation, but I cannot fathom how I was meant to explain to men in their 40s what the hell that even was.
My improvement in appearance since then I’d argue was truly a positive transformation. I really did look like a stereotypical iPad kid. However, I did not absorb the effects of the Internet in the ways that other kids did, as evidenced by my seeming innocence and continuing curiosity to learn anything and everything.
One memory I’ll never forget is the end of middle school. For some impossible reason, I got through most of middle school unscathed by foul language. By the time it was ending, I still did not swear nor know many dirty words or phrases. I still don’t know how.
I was like a diamond ring flushed down a septic pipe that came out the other end somehow still pristine. Perhaps because my time on the Internet had been spent making creative drawings, watching Minecraft videos and learning. Or that my friends were well-mannered and I lived in a well-funded public school district. Meanwhile, everyone else had probably been on sites like UrbanDictionary or Reddit, soon to become high school troublemakers.
I was on the bus in eighth grade and I recall my friend saying one of these slang words, a dirty word, perhaps something most preteens knew by then, I cannot recall exactly. Upon realizing I didn’t understand him, he burst into laughter and remarked, “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” a reference to The Outsiders, the book we’d just read in class.
When I look back at my time in middle school, I see it like an innocent dream that someone else had, separated by oceans of time. I really do feel to this day that back then I still was not aware of my own existence. That came shortly after this period for me, with exponential ripples. What likely adds to this perceived separation from the present day was the global pandemic that also came after.
So much has happened since then that I find it hard sometimes to understand who I am as a person. I’m searching for some labels in a box before I find that I fit none of them. Then I’m alone again. But if there’s one thing that I can take solace in, it’s that I haven’t changed in that particular creative way that I describe here. Only now, I am aware of my existence. And that’s a troubling, scary and difficult thing to grasp.
I still stand by my statement that no one is cool in middle school. Especially if you thought you were cool. Just maybe though, that’s the point. It’s humorous to say that I began social movements in middle school, yet without downplaying my experiences it may be true that I really did. I was the boy of revolutions, but more than that, I was also someone with the constant urge to create and share.
So for now, I’ll pretend there is no box of labels. After all, I didn’t seem to care in middle school, and if anything, that was cool.
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