As an elementary schooler, I was pretty much always the tomboy/dork. I was into running, I had a bug collection, and my very best friend was the pudgy little boy that none of the "popular kids" talked to. Not that I cared, he was nice to me, and I myself was pretty weird. We looked out for each other. When I left that elementary school after I finished up 5th grade, it was decided by my parents that we would be moving to Gainesville due to a job offer for my dad. I was indifferent about it because I knew that I would be switching schools anyways. But I had no idea what I was in for when I would be entering the world of middle school.

When I got there on my first day, I thought that I was pretty smart. After all, I had been a safty patrol the year before (which was a big deal at the school I went to). As the day progressed however, I was beginning to feel stupider and stupider; I didn’t know what any of these kids were talking about. They were using all kinds of words that I had only heard from my granddad, and they were talking about things that, let’s just say, they didn’t go over in sex-ed. Lucky for me, I made a friend in band that would teach me everything I would need to know to get by. She made me a list of rules that would help my not get crushed by the public school system and its students:

Rule number 1: You are not supposed to care about school work. And if you do, pretend that you don’t; cool kids don't care about school, it’s weird.

Rule number 2: You must always have a crush on someone or have a boyfriend; otherwise people will think that you're weird.

Rule number 3: Get rid of your bug collection, because that’s weird.

Rule number 4: Don't talk about your parent; that’s weird.

Rule number 5: Know what all drugs are and what they look like, so when people talk about them you can contribute to the conversation.

Rule number 6: Go to Holister and buy all your clothes from there. Actually it doesn’t matter where you buy them, but make sure all your clothes say Holister, because that’s what the cool kids wear.

Rule number 7: If a teacher asks a question to the class, DO NOT raise your hand. This would imply that you A) know the answer, which in uncool, and B) that you care, which is weird.

Although some of these rules helped me to be socialy acceptable, like the bug collection rule, others didn’t make sence and were difficult for me to follow. The Holister thing made absolutely no sense. What did it matter if my t shirt had a flower on it, and her shirt had a flower and the word Holister on it? I blatently disregarded this rule, except for the one shirt that I went and got with heather. The no hand raising rule was the most difficult, because I was always used to being excited when I knew the answer to a question a teacher asked. Now it was a no-no?

Now I’m so glad that middle school is over. The reason I couldn’t pick one specific awkward event for this assignment is because the whole middle school experience was awkward. Every single day was weird and nothing ever made sense. But now I can look back in that set of rules and laugh at them, because now I think they’re weird.

        There are consequences for being as forgetful as I can be at times. Some days I forget to bring my house key to where ever I go, but usually I’m able to get in through the garage. One day, forgetting my key turned out to be very problematic and caused me to be wet and stranded outside of my house waiting for my mother to rescue me. I also didn’t know that this one slip up would mark the beginning of a domino effect that would take place due to not having my key. I didn’t find out that the key was missing until I got up to the front door, after Bridget drove off after driving my home from practice. So there I am, at my front door rummaging through my backpack searching for my little house key that I thought must be hiding somewhere underneath my books. After I had decided that I had looked everywhere in my backpack I switched gears and started looking through my lacrosse bag. I even looked in my cleats, but it was in vein, for the key was not in there. I wasn’t going to walk around the whole house to the garage until I was sure that my key was not with me, so just to be sure, I checked my saxophone case but with no such luck. Not that I was really surprised not to find it in there, I would have had to have been out of my mind to put it in my saxophone case.

       So I grabbed all my stuff and made my way to the side of the house. I didn’t want to have to get into my house through the garage because it’s always such a big mess and it’s hard to get through , especially when you are carrying a bunch of stuff. But since it was particularly hot I happy to get in the house. So I went up to the garage code thing and I punched in the code. Nothing happened. Well I must have typed it too fast, I thought, so I punched it in again, this time slower; still nothing. Getting frustrated now I tried it again, and again but with no success. After trying at least fifteen times I finally decided that it was a lost cause. It was not going to allow me to enter. I thought about calling one of my parents but that was also a lost cause because my phone was hiding in my room underneath a pile of stuff. Slightly more frustrated I pulled down the tailgate of the truck and sat down on it thinking. It was starting to cool off because there were some clouds rolling in. While I was being thankful for the shade the clouds were providing I was not thinking about how they could possibly be rain clouds. Sure enough they were rain clouds! Luckily by the time it started raining really hard I got saved by my mother who had finally gotten out of her meeting and was able to rescue me from the rain.

You know what I think is under appreciated? Automatic windows. Manual windows are such a pain! Here is why I think manual windows are a pain: if you are alone in the car, but you want to role the passenger window up or down, you either have to lean all the way over and crank it yourself, or you have to not do it at all and just suffer through whatever made you want to change the position of the window. Also, it takes forever to manually role down a window,

            The convenience of automatic window is just so fabulous if you think about it. From the driver’s seat you can roll down the window simply by moving your hand to the switch. This also prevents accidents in more way then one. Let’s say you are driving down the road on a hot summer day, and your air conditioner isn’t working. With a manual window it would be extremely difficult to role the window down while strapped in your seatbelt, and it’s also dangerous to be leaning all the way over in a car while you’re driving, not only because you can't see the road if you are. And if you are paying attention to the windows you're no longer paying attention to the road, pluse you could accidently turn your stearing wheel the wrong way and hit something. 

            The other great thing about automatic windows is the locks that are on them. Let’s say you have to drive some kids around. Kids love pressing buttons and seeing things being controlled by the buttons that they are pressing. If the kids you are driving around are messing with be windows, all you have to do is press that wonderful lock button right next to your left hand, and BOOM! Problem solved.

I have never felt more out of place then at my friend, _____’s 14th birthday party. It was, shall we say, culturally diverse. I should have known from the second I walked up that it would be crazy. As soon as I got up there______ comes running out in black fishnets, a neon green tutu, and a skimpy top and tackled me. It had been a while, so she was pretty excited to see me I guess. When we got inside her house the smell of smoke and alcohol was almost stifling, but I figured it was just the adults drinking. But quite honestly, I don’t think I could tell the adults from the kids. _______ had this bizarre cup in her hand, and she says to me “Here, have some of this, it’s really yummy!” And of course, my naive little brain didn’t think for a minute that it could even possibly contain alcohol. Because a house full of responsible adults wouldn’t let their 14 year old daughter have alcohol, right? Wrong; that cup had vodka in it. It tasted so strong and so terrible that I could hardly swallow it. I coughed and said “What was that?!” And she just looked at me and started laughing. Then everyone else started laughing too, and I suddenly felt very small.

 Another very intimidating aspect of this party was the dancing. If the headmaster of my high school was offended by the school dances, he would have thrown up of he had been there. I just sat in the corner with the only other white girl at the party and we talked about how weird we both felt. It was only after ______ tried to teach us how to grind when we decided that we should call it a night. _______ and I are still very close friends, and we still talk, but I haven’t been back to her house since then.