The Horrors Of Middle School

Recently our family watched the movie Diary Of A Wimpy Kid. It’s a good thing the movie was funny. Otherwise it may have triggered post-traumatic stress disorder. I could relate to WAY too many things in the movie.

While watching, I recalled a few situations that made 7th through 9th grade miserable:

1) Mt. Jordan Middle School was an oven. Seriously. It was an oven with desks inside. The school was old and had no air conditioning. You could have baked a loaf of bread in my math class. I always felt so sad for my history teacher Mr. Murphy. He had the hottest classroom in the school and he always had enormous sweat tacos under his armpits.

2) PE Class: are you kidding me? I could write a Bible-sized story just about the misery of PE. This is going to come as a shocker, but in middle school I was (am) a scrony, skinny weakling. “Shirts and Skins” is a cruel punishment passed down from Hitler to PE teachers.

We didn’t play Dodge Ball in middle school. It was called “War Ball” (for good reason). Apparently bouncy balls are for sissies. We used fully inflated volley balls. I had braces, and a few times my face got an up-close-and-personal meeting with a volley ball traveling the speed of sound. The inside of my mouth resembled bloody ground hamburger. Sometimes I would pretend I got out and go stand on the side just to minimize the carnage.

3) Home Economics: I don’t remember what we actually DID in the class. I just remember that our teacher was MEAN. And if you got in trouble, the punishment was to go to the classroom across the hall and sit in “The Box”. I am among the lucky majority who never saw The Box. I don’t know if anyone ever returned from The Box. I don’t know what happened in The Box. Maybe kids got water-boarded.

I’m sure there were many other traumatic experiences that my brain has protectively blocked as a way to prevent life-long mental scars.

What was your most miserable middle school experience?