I went back to my old junior high last night (now a middle school) for my niece’s volleyball game.  It was one of the first times I’ve been back since the 80s.  Junior High was tough for me.  I wasn’t activity bullied in a traditional sense, but there were moments.

I entered and saw that a wall had been built between the outside doors and the commons / cafeteria area.  I guess it was for more security.  My mind flashed back to those lunch room hours where I was given soy burgers and half pints of milk.  Back then I was self conscious and wouldn’t have dared brought my lunch for fear of being made fun of.  But deep down the ham sandwich and chips that my mom packed for me would have been ten times better than whatever they served in that lunchroom.  I went hungry many times.

No one ever really chooses to go back to junior high.  Even those bullies never really want to go back. I figure those bullies are probably now dealing with dead end jobs and just getting by.  Do they feel regret for treating everyone harshly during the late 1980s?  Or was that so far back have they become laid back?

I really wanted to take a quick tour of the school, but it was after hours and I was with my mother who I needed to help to the car.  I wanted to see if those lightning bolt Olympian logos from my minischool were still on the lockers.  It was in 1988 when they decided to introduce the concept of minischools in order to curb the problems.  Initially the school was built to have each subject in a pod – that is a u shaped group of classrooms groups by subject – English – History – Math – Science…  Minischools put the u shaped pods into housing 2 minischools with a teacher from each of the subjects.  You stayed all day with the same group of kids and weren’t having to travel all over the school to each of the pods.  You stayed in your own pod.  The idea was radical at the time.  Due to the way band was organized all of my friends were in the same minischool.  However I did hear about those in one minischool who’s friends were in a completely different minischool.

By the time I got to the 9th grade and still in the same school with the minischools, I was somewhat tired of what I saw as babying the 7th and 8th graders with minischools.  We were freshmen, and against the grain, we ruled the school or so we thought.  It was unusual in that our city’s high school was just 10th through 12th grades.  The high school was already overcrowded and at that point they simply did not have room for the freshmen class.  So there we were: high school freshmen in a school with 8th and 7th grade mentality.

Much of junior high, especially my 7th grade year, was something I wanted to forget.  I wouldn’t say this revisit struck a cord with me, but it did give me pause.