Junior high - EEEEEEEK!

as i said, you don't grow up fat, on the east coast, and with a name that rhymes with a popular ice cream chain without major trauma.

It covers 7th to--what?--9th or 10th grade. I was never clear on the boundaries since I went to the same school from 8th to 12th grade.

things i remember from jr high:

- standing up to a bully and pushing him so hard into a locker it dented. i got suspended!
- "do you know why she has all those zits?! because she gives blowjobs!!"
- "you'll never achieve anything if your attitude doesn't improve, young man." (he was right!)

'A future teenage pregnancy statistic.'
'Nothing of any significance what-so-ev-er.'
'Nonentity. Look it up if you can actually read anything but the words Gloria Vanderbilt.'
'My finger, see?' (raise middle finger when shop teacher's head is turned)
'What happens thirteen years and nine months after cousins have sex.'
'That thing...it's in your hair...I think it's moving!' (best after annual head-lice film spectacular)

Hah, when tidying recently I found my notepad from when I was in year seven or eight. Luckily for me and probably for everyone else, I have no scanner. I should probably burn it before anyone else sees it but I kept looking at it thinking, "Yes, it's all embarrassing and awful, but at least I still wrote/drew then..." Even if it was all rubbish cartoons, stories about self-mutilation, and triangular skull and crossbones. Hmm... ulp. (Of course NOBODY must ever be allowed to see what band names are etched in biro and compasspoint on the front of any of my notepads from before age 17, heh.)

(Despite spending most of my time feeling sorry for myself, contemplating suicide and feeling alienated from my group of friends, oh poor self-obsessed nerdy me etc, I did actually *have* a group of friends - I know, I'm surprised too - and while most people thought I was deeply uncool very few people ever actually told me so, so no major horror stories here either from school itself, it was just the walk home through the council estates that got unpleasant sometimes. And, god, I was a jerk. Sigh. Please tell me that nobody noticed because they were too busy racking up insecurities of their own...)

oh
god
that.

*shudders*
*convulses*
*erases from memory again*

Ned : physical exercise / Tom : acoustic guitar playing

Not entirely true -- but not all that wrong.

These girls were HORRIBLE. I wasn't going to allow them to go unchallenged if they started on me, but they didn't like anyone: Jewish girls with nice clothes were called 'schmucks' to the point where the name-caller would get suspended, there were regular impromptu girlfights, and lots of wearing of purple and lavender and roach clips in hair. I have an aversion to those colours even today, for ewww-yucky-white-trash-nightmare reasons. As long as they were there, my life was pure hell, but it tailed off by the end of the two years thanks to most of the ringleaders' pregnancies.

That's actually not true. If any Ida fans want to kill their idols, ask me about Bates Junior High!

The other wasn't even a sign - it was a newspaper pic of a MODEL on the runway. Gee, I wonder what that was supposed to mean? Again, I wasn't the one that discovered it - some girl pulled me aside in the hall, ripped it off, and told me to "watch out". I taped that pic to the inside of my locker, and left it there for at least a year. (This might've happened in high school, actually. As if the societal anguish I put myself through wasn't enough, I had to be the butt of some high-concept accusatory fag-baiting horsecrap.)

I'm just happy I wasn't the guy showing off his taped-on armpit hair.

The one really concrete moment of general harassment - and even then it's not that awful - I remember was a class in science where the teacher was talking about statistical occurrences of HIV/AIDS among different groups. When he got to the higher rate among homosexuals some charming individual yelled out, "I guess there's no chance for Tim, then." As usual, revenge is hearing that this very same guy is apparantly now a friendless pothead uni drop-out.

You went to school with Fred Durst?

Eating spinach = oh shit he is eating boogers!
Carrying book through rain = oh shit he pissed his book!
Listening to R&B = oh shit he is gay!
Listening to hip hop = RAP is CRAP! go to hell! (the only fight i ever got into was over this. i won somehow)
"I have more friends than you"
"The headlines say you have no dick"
"Hey everybody have some gummi bears. No you can't have one"
"Should we let him sit here with US?"
"Ugh! I don't sit next to loserzzzzz!"
I don't remember much else...... My first contact with a girl was her sticking her 5 fingernails into me until i began to bleed.

so eeeeeek indeed. i'm better now i think....

"Junior High" for me was a painful experience. Really, really horrible. I hated most of it. It really didn't help that my girlfriend (who I'm still with, after over 3 years) was deemed ugly and therefore both she and I received cruel and relentless torment from legions of my 'peers'.

I still feel like crying now when I think about it. During that stage is the only time in my life when I really honestly wanted to kill someone. Or several someone's. I still feel some of that today.