How I survived Jr. High

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was 12 years old and starting 7Th grade. Yes I roamed the halls with the dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. In our tiny school, the Jr. high was lumped together with the high school all in one building. Therefore, I went from being one of the oldest kids in school where I felt like we reigned over the underclassmen, to being one of the youngest, most inconsequential beings on the planet. No longer did we have desks, we had lockers. In grade school our classes were held in one room but In Jr. high we had to go to a different classroom every hour. We had to learn where those classrooms were! I was completely out of my element. I was a little fish in a huge pond.

This being the case, I did what I typically do when I'm overwhelmed...I did something stupid. Right after lunch, I walked up to the biggest guy of all the guys who were standing around doing nothing and said "Wanna fight?". If memory serves correctly (which it often does not) (child of the 60s) this guy nearly passed out from laughing. He said something like "Go on, get outta here kid" and that's just what I did realizing the silly thing I'd just done. You know how that is don't you? How you don't really notice that you're doing something stupid until you're in the middle of doing it? He could have pounded my face, or tripped me as I limped away. He could have humiliated me entirely.

But it turned out that this guy was nice. He said hello if he saw me in the halls. If I ever seemed upset or anything he wanted to know why, just in case his "muscle" could fix my problems. It was nice to know that somebody cared and that if I ever did need back-up, it was there.

And so we learned how to stuff all our books into our lockers and where the classrooms were. And we learned how to stay out of the upperclassman's way.