HUMOR DISCLAIMER: This article is intended as satire and uses the tools of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule in the context of contemporary politics, current trends, recent school events, and other topical issues.

by Taylor Wallace ‘21

Middle school: the literal most awkward years of a person’s life. You feel old, but in reality, you’re still a child. You’re finally experiencing moderately ‘real-world’ experiences. You’re going through awkward changes with yourself and your friends. Life is weird. I personally have completely erased grades six through eight from my memory, considering they consisted of some of the lowest points of my life.

One of the most horrid aspects of my middle school life was how I dressed. I feel like we can all relate to that one. Who let us? Who told us we looked cute following all of the cringey trends? It truly baffles me to think about the people we used to be in middle school. The most scarring aspect was the wardrobe. Let me begin with the Lulu Lemon headbands. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t own at least 6 of them. I had to have every color of those overpriced pieces of fabric. And you best bet we all felt wealthy walking around wearing the literal cheapest item that Lulu sells. Oh, and the Nike Elites. The socks of all socks. Frankly, if you didn’t own Elites you were a loser, I hate to say it. They were treated like holy grail in middle school. Boys would walk around with neon elites pulled up to their knees and their matching shorts hanging low, meeting the top of the sock. To top it all off, they’d have on one of those basic Vineyard Vines shirts; the Gucci of middle school. Oh how I begged my mom to buy me one of those long sleeve Vineyard Vine shirts.

The worst part about how we dressed in middle school was the fact that everyone wore the exact same thing. There was zero originality, and that’s indisputable. Girls, you can’t tell me that at least three times a week you wore black leggings, your UGGs with the bows on the back, and a quarter-zip from PINK. Boys, you can’t tell me that you didn’t wear a different color Under Armour neon matching shirt and shorts everyday to school. Let’s just admit it; we did not know how to dress. But we’ve grown and we can now put those disgraceful times behind us.

And who remembers those weird trends that we were so obsessed with? Fidget spinners, a student’s best friend and a teacher’s worst enemy. I feel the teachers pain though because kids would be spinning that little guy nonstop; on their nose, on their pencil, on other people’s noses. I remember in eighth grade I found one in my desk in Spanish class and took it with me. I used it for a solid two periods before passing it off to another fidget spinner deprived kid. Also, remember when people would do TBH/Rates on their Instagram and you would anxiously wait to see what number out of 10 your crush rated you? There were also those ‘ship’ accounts and you once again would be praying anxiously to get paired with your crush.

Also, why did we act like school was so hard? I’d stay up until 10pm one night doing homework and then post a picture of all my work on Snapchat with the caption, ‘Always on the grind’. I’d act as if I’d just finished finding the derivative of a cubic function when in reality all I did was fill out a graphic organizer for my history project.

Basically, what I’m saying is that middle school was an extremely awkward time in our lives; a time that I personally blocked out. I have to hand it to middle school though. I can honestly say that I didn’t treasure how easy things were back then. But that time is over and now were in high school; where it only gets harder.