I Told You So

Everyone reaches that moment in their life when the elder generations can smugly sit back, cross their arms, and say, “I told you to just wait until you get to be my age”. Those occurrences have happen a half a dozen times since I took the role of part parent, part referee, and all the time victim of preteen mood swings or otherwise known as a middle school teacher.

For the most part, the boys are completely absorbed in their own awkwardness. Any social wrinkles are solved with a punch on the nose or a shove on the basketball court. The issue is then completely forgotten.

Girls are a different matter. When they have the slightest snag in their perception of what their life should be like, it can domino into an atomic bomb sized imprint on the hapless souls unfortunate enough to be around during the melodramatic explosion.

I'm not talking about the dozens of Hermmiones waiting patiently to turn into Emma Watsons but the Mean Girl/Gossip Girl It Girls of seventh grade. I have three in one English class, and I refer to them as the Trifecta.

At least once a day one of the three either has a friend, an appearance, or a boy meltdown, which usually ends with me confiscating a note, a hairbrush, or a mirror. The range of impromptu weapons is quite diverse since at this age students still equate flirting with beating the snot out of the guy. “Boy related issues” is when I’m mitigated to referee mode.

Typically, I maintain the stance of a casual observer into the highs and lows of the Middle School soap opera, but this week I accidentally threw myself into the headwaters of the preteen torrent.

One interesting side effect of being on crutches last week is that I was forced to walk slowly through the halls. I had more time to read the cornucopia of student projects plastered on the walls. On little heart shaped cutouts the students wrote what they liked about their school. Many students listed the names of their friends. I noticed one of the Trifecta’s name was furiously crossed out in marker under “friends”.

Identifying the owner of the construction paper heart as one of the Trifecta’s many cohorts, I checked my student’s corresponding heart. Just what I expected; the frienemy’s name was scribbled over in black ink. Permanent marker is quite step for the same girl that loved me, hated me, and refused to speak to me in a five minute time span.

That day in class I asked the Trifecta sovereign if she and her friend have forgiven each other yet.

She gasped and took a step back. “How did you know!”

I maybe slurred together, “violent-permanent-market-scribbles” before the girl jettisoned into the turbo-speech preteen girls have perfected.

Between the “likes” and “you knows” I deciphered something about the ex-friend spending too much time with one of the other Trifecta members. Feelings were hurt. Words were spoken. An infamous note was written. Now the girls haven’t spoken in a month.

The whole catastrophe was a little confusing because all girls involved are… or were (I’m a little baffled whether this fracture merits past tense) friends.

I found myself wondering, was I like that when I was thirteen? The answer resounded confidently and unbidden through my mind: yes, yes I was. The rapid speech is not a question. I still speak notoriously fast much to the chagrin of boyfriends and my students.

The melodrama? Yep, I did that too. I distinctly remember a fight involving a banana and not speaking to a visiting friend because my other friends told me not to.

After suggesting the Tifecta queen write her friend a letter detailing her feelings and how she wanted to be friends again, the student bounced off in a complete about-face mood swing.

I suddenly realized what my mother meant when she said, “Wait until you have a daughter just like you.”

Just as suddenly, I realized that I really, really do not want to have children.