A Mom in Middle School

Teens Will Be Teens

I knew the second I walked to the bus stop that I was under dressed. Abbie had on a yellow sweatshirt, yellow eyeshadow, and a head full of yellow glitter spray with a ponytail held up by yellow ribbons. She even changed the white laces of her Converse sneakers out with yellow ones.

    "Your hall spirit is terrible," Abbie said. "You ready to get crushed?"

    "I didn't know people actually cared about things like this," I said.

    "I care very deeply about the pizza and ice cream for the winners. And missing class."

    "We do get to miss class. That's a good point."

    "Hetcher Hall has been champions for the past two years I've been there. It's only fitting that we get another win."

    "I dunno...my homeroom teacher, Mister Burke, said he's been studying pop culture for the past two weeks. He gave us a complete analysis of all the American Idol finalists last week."

    We got on the bus and talked about what we thought the top answers would be for all the questions, like favorite movies and favorite actors.

    "If you don't think Leonardo Decaprio is going to be number one, you're just wrong," I said as we pulled into the parking lot.

    "I'm telling you, Orlando Bloom will at least be ahead of him," Abbie said.

    We met up in the library with Blake, where everyone else was tying ribbing in their hair or painting their faces.

    "Do you still think I need to hand in our science homework if we're leaving midway through the period?" Blake asked.

    "Probably," I said.

    He sighed and took his textbook out of his backpack, along with a sheet of loose leaf. I showed him my answers so he could copy them really quickly before homeroom. After a trip to our lockers, I walked into my homeroom, which was also a hair and painting studio.

I passed Kevin, a heavyset kid who usually kept to himself and was the target of so, so much bullying. I would really, really like to hope with a lot of the body positivity movements we have today that things like that don't happen anymore.

Anyway, Kevin was in the front of the room, dressed in a green shirt, shorts, and a cape. He had a big green N taped to his shirt and was taking pictures for the yearbook staff.

"Nice outfit," I said to him.

"Thanks! I'm Norris Man!" he said, putting his hands on his hips and looking triumphantly into the distance.

"Teacher Trivia is everyone's favorite day," said Mister Burke as I sat down. He looked calm and composted as usual, only wearing a green tie with his white shirt.  

    I sat down and just kind of observed everyone. We didn't have any spirit days or parties at our last school. It also seemed so weird that in a world where there were all these different cliques and groups of people who didn't get along, everyone was coming together to have a good time. Hell, they were even coming over to me and offering to put ribbons in my hair. I declined, because Josie literally just got lice from when her and her friends were playing "hair salon" during recess.

    We sat through the morning announcements, where they announced the different schedules of all the halls and grades, for those of us who had the schedule and threw it out because it looked unimportant. Our first round was going to be in the gym, against Clay, the purple hall. If we made it to the championship, that would be after lunch in the auditorium.