I went to the mall today. I don’t make it to the mall very often these days, and I think from now on I will try to avoid intentionally ever going there again. I really hated it. The second I walked in, I was taken aback by the sheer quantity of middle schoolers. I have a rule that I generally try to stay away from middle schoolers. Remember middle school? Let’s reminisce.

In middle school I discovered sarcasm. It opened up an entire new world for me, and I used it at every possible moment, appropriate or not. My friends thought I was funny- they were middle schoolers too. But looking back I think my sarcastic humor was juvenile and unfunny. I think it was also mostly negative, and sometimes I took it too far and probably hurt other people’s feelings. I have definitely retained a dry sense of humor, but I’ve grown up a lot and it is more controlled.

When I was in middle school, I was pretty sure I knew just about everything there is to know. I thought I was just so smart. By the time I was 13, I was all set, and there wasn’t much left to learn. That was my opinion of my own knowledge until I was about 17, from which point it has been steadily declining. I am now of the opinion that I know absolutely nothing, and the older I get the more I believe that.

I was super judgmental in middle school. Like, the Jerry Falwell, fire and brimstone type. If you swore, if you were gay, if you were pro-choice, if you did any number of certain things I had deemed unacceptable, I shut you out and secretly condemned you to hell. I really distanced myself from relationships with some potentially great people, just because of one aspect I disagreed with. This probably continued until very recently, when I realized all of the awesome friendships I was missing out on.

Physically, I was pretty awkward in middle school. Things started changing faster than I could deal with. I had braces for two years. I also had a pretty strange wardrobe that consisted mainly of ankle-biter jeans and baggy sweatshirts.

I have grown up quite a bit since middle school. Generally I think the changes have been very positive. Two years ago the language arts teacher I had for all three years of middle school invited me and two of her other students to come and talk to her class about high school and college. Like I said, I was a jerk in middle school, but especially to this teacher. When I went back, I could tell how pleasantly surprised she was by how much I had matured. This made me pretty happy. While I generally don’t like reflecting on middle school or being around middle schoolers because it’s just sort of unpleasant, sometimes it’s nice to just compare and contrast the me of today with the me of 8 years ago.

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