In Between

Remember what it was like to be 12 or 13 years old?

Did you flinch when I asked you to go there?  Most people do.

It's my new favorite conversation starter in all situations of polite parlor chattery.

Me: "Do you remember what it was like to be in 7th grade?"

Them: *Wince!*

Me: "Tell me a story about when you were 13." 

You should try it sometime, if you're ever at a loss for words.

Everyone wants in on this conversation.  The memories are bad -- deliciously, hilariously, gloriously bad.  There's the initial retraction, like a snail, pulling into its shell away from the painful memories.  Nobody wants to reveal, but then we all start to laugh and there's an outpouring of narrative -- tales ripe with awkwardness, tinged with shame, and sometimes, more often than you'd expect, downright heroic.

My brother (who is gay) gave a girl a reality check at ballroom dancing class when she rolled her eyes and huffed in disgust at being his partner.  "What, do you think I WANT to touch you?"  

My family friend, a generation my senior, chose to sit with a developmentally disabled girl for an entire year in home economics, even though she wanted to be with her friends, even though it was social suicide, just because it was the right thing to do.

After weeks of using his words, my dad finally socked it to a bully who had been tormenting him (four-eyes!) about his glasses on the schoolbus, then marched into the principal's office and turned himself in.

My grandmother punched a classmate (son of an admiral) right in the face because he called her favorite teacher the N-word.

Punching in the face is the surprising theme of these stories in my pacifist family.

Here's something I did, when I was that age: I faked sick to come home from a party.

I told my 8th grade students about it this week.  Their health and wellness teacher has them choosing safe-words to text to their families in case they need a deus-ex-machina to pull up in the car and whisk them out of an uncomfortable situation.  (That's what they call it.  A Safe Word.  I wonder if any of them knows what that term usually means?)  They are incredulous.  They are offended.  They think it's stupid.  They can not imagine needing any such phrase.  They resent their teacher trying to make them talk to their parents. They are too cool to need anyone to come pick them up anywhere, ever.  They were talking about it in front of me.  Not talking about it TO me, mind you, just talking about it NEAR me, the way teens do.

"I faked sick once, to go home from a party."  I announce.  I am supporting their health and wellness teacher's curriculum.  "I was uncomfortable, and I wanted to leave, so I pretended that I had a headache and called my parents and told them to come pick me up."  

I have their attention now.  Even the girl who thinks she knows everything about sex and drugs and rock and roll because her considerably older siblings live fast... or, at least, talk fast.

"What were they doing?" They want to know.  What could possibly be so bad that their hip teacher would want to go home from a party?

"They were playing spin the bottle, and I didn't want to play."  I explain.  "I didn't want to kiss those boys.  I had never kissed anyone before, and I didn't want to do it on display like that.  Besides, everyone at the party was way more popular than me.  What if the bottle landed on me and everyone groaned 'Ewwww!  Not Kate!'  And why would I want to kiss those boys anyway?  They were always mean to me.  And what if it escalated?  I just didn't want to be there, so I said I felt sick." 

"Oh."  They say, disappointed. "So it was just a normal 7th grade party."  Little miss already-grown-up scowls.  She was expecting debauchery.  I wince at her observation, picturing her spinning a bottle and it coming to rest on one of the pimply, rude boys who I chaperoned at play rehearsal.  Ick.  I remain a prude.

"I'm still friends with the girl who hosted the party."  I told them.  "And another girl who was at the party, too.  Our kids play together.  She remembers the party, and she told me, just a couple of years ago, as a grown-up, that she wished she had been brave enough to fake sick, too, call her mom, and go home.  She was uncomfortable, too.  Social pressure is real.  These things ought to be easy, but they aren't.  That's why you have your safety word.  It doesn't have to be super extreme.  It might just be a normal middle school party." 

Little miss grownup is seriously disappointed.  On the other end of the social spectrum, a smart, deadpan girl with a dry sense of humor who never would have shown up for a party like that in the first place, a girl who does not give a single care what people think about her, a Daria of this modern age, announces:

"You know what I'd do?  I'd just say, 'THIS IS DUMB. I'M GOING HOME.'"

I smile.

I know you would, honey.  I know you would.

Maybe that should be her safety phrase:  This is dumb.  I'm going home.