I have been picturing all of you as middle schoolers

I mean that as a compliment

That picture above isn’t one I’d normally choose to share. I have no idea how or why I once scanned it onto my computer but the other day I was looking for another photo and there it was, unexpectedly digitalized.

I know that kid, though. Oh man do I ever. I even vaguely remember the day I took that picture. I had recently moved bedrooms. There’d been some household shuffling as older brothers headed off to college. I inherited not just the space but the furniture from my brother Brian, whom I idolized. The Gandhi poster was mine, but the bedsheets weren’t. I was play acting adolescent maturity. At the time my favorite cassettes were Last Splash by The Breeders, Star by Belly and a mixtape of Fugazi songs that Eric, whom I also idolized, made for me, partly to hip me to a cool band, partly to help me with a music class project. My two favorite authors were Howard Zinn and Dave Barry. The ball cap was from Oklahoma State, where Eric was in grad school. My shirt advertised a group of political satirists who were friends with my parents.

I don’t know why I’m sitting like that.

That’s what stands out the most, looking at this picture now. I remember setting the self-timer on my parent’s camera and running back to my bed before the blinking red light stopped flashing. But why criss-cross applesauce? I have never been able to successfully sit like that. It’s one of the many ways my Gumby-limbed body is forever at war with my best intentions. For my entire life, when I’ve had to sit on the floor for extended periods of times, I’ve defaulted to propping myself up awkwardly on my knees (not recommended, but the best I can do).

But in this picture, it’s as if I was responding to a dare. “Real men sit like a kindergartener during circle time.” “Oh yeah? Well I’ll show them then! I’m gonna bend my legs like a pretzel stretched to its breaking point, clasp my hands politely, and smile in a way that says to the world ‘oh God I hope I’m doing this right.’”

I love the kid in that picture. At least I do now. I didn’t love being that kid at that time. I assume that’s pretty typical, as far as coming of age goes. I also assume that, all things considered, I had it pretty easy.

I mean, sure, socially, Dunloggin Middle School was an absolute mess. In case you’re wondering if wearing “Montana Logging and Ballet Company” t-shirts and regaling your classmates with mini lectures about satyagraha was a ticket to popularity and nonstop make-out sessions, it was not. My only major conflict with my parents was when they put me in karate lessons against my will, on account of being frequently punched, shoved into lockers and tossed into the creek behind our school. I agreed with their assessment of the problem, but not the solution. Did they really think there was any world where I’d be able to physically defend myself? What part of “giant Gandhi poster and uncooperative limbs” did they not understand?

Parenting is hard, or so I’ve come to understand.

The bullies sucked, massively, but they weren’t the full story. My family clearly loved the hell out of me. And also, I was a straight, white, middle class boy, a confluence of identities which doesn’t prevent you from getting your butt kicked, but does cocoon you from so much else. And for all the junk, there was fun to be had. I lived within walking distance of a bunch of kids my age, and whatever social hierarchies we fell into between 8:00-3:00 were shrugged off after hours. Summers especially were pretty damned idyllic— endless games of flashlight tag, multiple sleepovers a week, busting it up at the neighborhood pool when the weather was nice, MTV and Mario Three when it wasn’t.

The kid in the picture laughed a lot, at home and with friends.

But of course he felt unsure of himself. Of course he didn’t quite know how to operate in a weird growing body around other weird growing bodies. Of course he walked shakily on the border between legibility and safety. He wanted to be fully seen, but not noticed. He was terrified of rejection, and would sometimes avoid sticking his neck out. But then there he is, setting up the self timer on his parent’s camera. Adopting a pose that doesn’t quite fit. Smiling, but as if he’s learning to do so for the first time.

I bet you know somebody like that.

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I’ve told myself the “middle school is rough for everybody” story frequently enough that it has become my own personal Gospel. I’ve believed it enough to spook myself at the prospect of one day having a middle schooler myself. But now we’re here, and praise the Lord I now have a living, breathing counter-example living in my house.

Growing up is never easy, but I can now attest there are in fact middle schools that are safer and more loving than others. My son and his friends are… doing pretty well, knock on wood, and are generally pretty gentle with each other. I know this is not true for every kid at their school, but the fact that it’s true for a decently sized cohort of teens (across gender, class and racial lines, it’s worth noting) is a testament to some pretty incredible adults in their lives.

I am currently spending more time with middle schoolers than I have since I stopped being one. I hear them when I take carpool shifts, cracking each other up in the back seat of our Prius. I scan my son’s texts and am welcomed into baroque group project drama. I watch them scream their lungs out in celebration at assemblies. I see the way they move together like the world’s most distractible magnets when I chaperone events- drawn towards and repelled away from each other, seemingly at random. Sometimes, in my role as the middle school teacher at our Quaker Meeting, I get a glimpse of them at their most vulnerable, but mostly they just demolish our snack supply. Two different feats, equally impressive.

I did not appreciate middle schoolers when I was one— I was too caught up in my own inner monologue (social threats everywhere!) to notice the actual human beings around me. So what a delight, to be absolutely enthralled by how hilarious/insightful/selfish/worldly/myopic/preening/kind/cruel/thoroughly in motion thirteen and fourteen year olds can be. They are not perfect, these absolute human treasures. They can still make each other cry. They still fail to notice the space they’re taking up, and who it crowds out. But they are doing their best.

The other day, on a field trip with the Quaker Meeting kids to a local chocolate shop, I took a picture of one of our teens hamming it up with my younger daughter, a nine-year-old who adores her. The seventh grader loved the picture, which captured her at her goofiest, and begged me to send it to her. She instructed me to put her name in my phone as “The Diva,” explaining later that “it’s very important to identify yourself as a diva. I mean, if you want to. I also respect other people’s rights not to be divas. That’s equity, I think?” She then disappeared into a throng of teens and tweens literally jumping on each other’s backs, coming dangerously close to breaking a bench shaped like a cow in the process.

To be a self-proclaimed diva, but to also have plenty of time for an adoring nine-year-old. To desperately want a picture of you and that younger child goofing around with a hairnet. To offer a definition of equity that simultaneously makes no sense at all and all the sense in the world. To then pivot from that impromptu story of self/us/now to more silliness and potentially some unintentional property damage. This is thirteen, or so I’m learning. I don’t remember it like that, but surely there was some of that in me too. Taking self-timed photographs of yourself on your brother’s bed is real diva behavior, if you think about it.

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If I were to be fully honest about what it is I do for a living, I’d say something about how I try to make sense of a riddle: How do you love human beings (and how do you act as if we are capable of loving each other), what with all the evidence to the contrary.

Not to give away my best answer, but you gotta try different tricks, especially when the news is rotten or when people have been ugly to you personally. One you hear about fairly frequently is reminding yourself that everybody in your life, even the most loathsome and annoying, were once innocent babies.

I’ve tried that, and even suggested it. There’s some truth there. But the problem is that babies are never willfully cruel. Babies can’t get lost in their own heads and forget to give a damn about others. Babies don’t take a joke too far, or abandon their friends when they need them the most.

Also: babies don’t perform for the camera one minute, and then try to disappear into their bodies the next. They don’t desperately hope that their friends never find out that they still sleep with their stuffed animals, or hold their mom and dad’s hands when nobody’s looking, or have far more doubts about the poses they’re affecting than they’ll ever let on.

No offense to those beatific infants, but these days I’ve been picturing us as middle schoolers.

I think of us, living in the past and present tense at once. Walking into frightening new spaces, hoping that we’ll be spared social devastation. Potentially being the worst to each other, but potentially being the best. Ping ponging from hilarious to sensitive to insightful to annoying in a single sentence. Declaring to the world that we’ve figured it out, that we aren’t mostly nervous and scared and in need of reassurance, but having our tentative smiles and wide eyes give us away.

I picture us at thirteen, and see our hearts in their rawest form— malleable, permeable, breakable. I see why we spend most of our days, long after we’ve theoretically passed that developmental stage, still famished for acceptance. I see why we reach out for each other, then push each other way. I see why we cling to hierarchies and structures that are killing us, because at least they’re what we know. I see why we’re hard to love, but how that somehow makes us more lovable. I get why we lie to each other, and why we can never fully hide the truth.

This is the gift of thirteen. I am now an adult writer, which means that I tell a story about myself professionally. If I wanted, I could try to convince you I was somebody I was not (cooler, savvier, more worldly and cynical). But who else could have written this essay than that kid? Still showing off for the camera. Both aware and unaware that he’s the only kid who ever asked for a giant framed Gandhi poster for his birthday. Perennially unsure what to do with his appendages. Asking for love, but maybe also ready to give it. Knowing in his bones that nothing stings more than rejection, but that nothing feels better than belonging.

End notes:

1. One thing that hasn’t changed since middle school is I will always feel naked and exposed whenever I have to ask for help. One thing that has changed is that “asking people to do something nice for you” is literally how I make a living, because that’s how newsletters work. If you liked this essay, thanks so much for considering pitching in. I wouldn’t ask if it didn’t make a big difference.

2. If you haven’t taken some time to read up on our fifty state relay of community gatherings, there’s so much fun news on our website. Reports from our first four states. Updated info on our next round of events (Bellevue, Idaho was last night, but we’ve got Salt Lake City; Denver; Tucson; Las Vegas; Santa Fe coming up! Join us!). An open application window for a bunch of other states (TX, OK, LA, MO, KS, IA, ND). And just the best possible vibes. You all, look at this map! It’s filling in!

   

3. If you want to hear more about the relay, you should also tune into the live event I’m doing here on Substack with the pied piper of gathering, Priya Parker. Next Monday, the 8th. 11:00 AM Central Time.

4. Very applicable video, to today’s topic:

5. Fugazi and the Breeders are often feted by aging dudes like me who still think too much about guitar-based music, but do you know who also ruled? Belly. Jeez, Tanya Donnelly’s voice is just a one of one, isn’t it?