Delayed Adolescence

Being twelve years old is all about making choices.

Not the complicated, compromise heavy, change of life choices you face at eighteen or twenty two or thirty. I mean, suburban kids in America have to be pretty fucking bad ass to be making those kind of life or death, tough calls in the seventh grade. Despite the media's propensity for highlighting those admittedly rare cases when adolescents gaze into the mouth of a revolver and emulate Hamlet, or squat sniper style above the playground and muse over the possibility of blasting the entire cadre of middle school assholes into the afterlife, the reality is much more mundane.

For example

The average American twelve years old can go apoplectic over having to choose between what pair of blue jeans to wear on the first day of school. Unless you are fortunate enough to be one of those elusive popular kids, chances are you did not get the memo on what brand of denim the popular kids will be wearing on the first day of school. And then, if you get the brand correct, what about the cut and color? Is it boot-cut dark or tapered acid washed? Even if you get that right, you're faced with an even more serious dilemna: Will I be considered cool if I wear these jeans, or will I be nothing more than a sychophant? Am I really cool enough to wear these jeans? Do I deserve to suggest that I shop at the same stores as the middle school aristocracy?

The answer is usually no.

Such questions are not worthy of lengthy debate. Clearly we're all adults here, and these concerns look trivial and petty, as well they should. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume these choices feel any less than crucial to the average twelve year old.

(Our collective developmental landscape is marked by the gradual shift into caring about something a little more than what brand of jeans we wear. This is "coming of age," and though we may have shifted our focus onto issues of greater import, we've never really left the seventh grade behind. I mean, can you honestly say you don't care what you look like? Didn't think so.)

I started the seventh grade in 1988, and thus it is my misfortune to report that I was susceptible to every grotesquerie of the late eighties aesthetic that rolled off the runway into my local mall. This penchant for being hip and in with the mainstream went deeper than attire and hairstyles and impacted musical taste and my early conception of politics (I was a Bush supporter in the 1988 election, because my friends were. Fortunately, I was too young to vote). I am loathe to report such perversions of self-respect won me few points with the middle school hierarchy, and my inability to maintain my former elementary school social status went unmediated by any attempts to correct the situation by imitiation and self-effacement.

I'd like to think that my seventh grade pariah status was decided early on by some secret joint committee meeting of the popular kids, during which time I was deemed just too rebellious, too smart, too anti-authoritarian to hold rank in their elite corps. I can imagine Erwin's living room, popcorn and sleeping bags strewn, a stack of John Hughes Rental Videos beside the television. Her mother comes downstairs to take last minute requests for hot chocolate and cookies, and seeing her daughter's slumber party guests happy, contented, and fading fast to the closing credits on "Pretty In Pink," she bids them all a "Goodnight" and goes upstairs.

The house silences and as soon as the parental element is settled all snug in their bed, the girls push the sleeping bags aside, take their seats at the shiny dining room table, and brew coffee in preparation for the arrival of the Male Coalition.

They arrive at quarter after three, led by spokesman, Chris, and carrying overflowing brown legal boxes. "After considerable effort," he says," we were able to appropriate the necessary materials."

Erwin takes her seat at the end of the table. "I would like to call this meeting to order."

The committee sits.

"Ladies and gentleman, we are hear tonight to consider the case of one Alison Fields, onetime committee member and Arts Subcommittee chair, who has moved to renew her status as "popular kid," at Hill Street Middle School. Chris, co-chair, and head of the male coalition, has been kind enough to put together these case statements for our consideration. Thank you, Chris."

What would follow would be a careful study of all my breaches of protocol over the sixth grade year, especially, but not limited to:

· My increased tendency toward underachievement, which would damage the Elite Corps' status as beautiful and smart.

· My increasingly awkward appearance--including bad hair (permed), bad skin, inability to reach any close proximity of puberty (no breasts), and recently added twenty or thirty pounds to my already chubby physique.

· My complete lack of athletic prowess (and ignorance of skiing)

· My waning self-confidence

· My poor fashion choices

And

· My close association with school weirdos.

Charts would be shown illustrating the downward slope of my GPA. A copy of

my recently read list would cite highly subversive source material. Perhaps even a video clip shot from a covert camera revealing one of my impromptu dance recitals, spells of talking to myself, and/or physical clumsiness. Two pots of coffee and several hours later, votes would be cast and my sorry ass would be unanimously voted out of the club

As the early morning light blue tints the windows outside the house, the crowd disperses, after inventing a secret handshake and swearing an oath to never reveal to me the nature of the proceedings. And that would be that.

The following Monday I arrived at Middle School only to be greeted by my pretty, ex-friend Katie: "Um, so you know how I invited you to my birthday party? Well, that's not going to work out."

Two weeks later, as I hid out in the girls bathroom stall, having received a laundry list of all my bad qualities crumpled on my lunch tray--"You're fat. You're Ugly. You're boring," I am forced to reconsider my status.

Excommunicated.

I'd like to say, hindsight being 20/20 and all, that this moment of realization was a real turning point in my life. That I was able to wipe the tears away, and stalk out of the bathroom with a new, improved fuck-all, tough girl attitude. That I reemerged days later flush with anti-authoritarian fervor, a working knowledge of Marxist politics, improved taste in fashion and music, or if nothing else, a smart ass comeback or two.

This was not the case.

In fact, the next few years would be an extended exercise in self-flagellation. I was twelve years old. I had no self-respect. The only thing I knew to do was make myself as obsequious as possible to the social forces that be and hope they rewarded me for my shit eating.

It's predictable as hell, but if you want to get to the bottom of why I am the way I am, you have to understand that the predominating emotion of my adolescence was pissed off. And in order to understand why I was pissed off, you have to consider the seventh grade.

The irony is: I didn't even realize how pissed off I was until sometime later.

But that's a whole other story.