Junior HIGH

You know what makes me so happy?  What makes me so happy is that I never ever ever have to relive my days as a seventh grader.  I think that seventh grade was perhaps the worst year of my life.  Or, adolescence, preteen years in general.  Those were tough.
Let me tell you why.

In seventh grade, my mom told me that it was impossible for me to wash my hair and that the only way we could fix this was if I got a boy haircut.  She told me it would suit me so well and that I would finally be able to wash my hair.  I was like, "MOM, I can wash my hair!!!!" But she was convinced, and she took me to the hairdresser who BUTCHERED my hair.  I kid you not.  I looked TERRIBLE.  Plus, besides having this retarded looking haircut, I had braces on my teeth and I was about a foot taller than anyone around me.  Not fun.  The boys started to call me Elvis, Salma called me Mickey Mouse.  And, when we went to Paris that year I was IN LOVE with Justin Timberlake and I was convinced that the moment I met JT he would instantly fall in love with me.  So I walked down the streets of Paris listening to the *Nsync album on repeat.  And one time, I saw this boy who looked like Justin Timberlake and I thought, finally this is my chance, only then I looked at myself and remembered that I was being compared to Elvis and Mickey Mouse and I didn't make a move.  Because I TOTALLY would have otherwise.  Totally.  Duh.

Then, all of a sudden, people turn mean in junior high.  It's like, in elementary school everyone is friends with everyone else, and we all play on the playground and run around and have fun and work together and go to space camp, and then all of a sudden, in seventh grade, you're thrown into a school with a bunch of people you dont know, there are already cliques, then the cool girl cliques all join together to make one giant cool girl clique and then the rest of us are left to sulk and worry about our braces and our short hair.  And boys are mean to girls, and girls try to flirt with boys, but boys are just mean, so then self confidences are shattered and there are always those really annoying loud obnoxious boys that do things in class that get the entire class in trouble (maaaaniiii that was you).  Not fun.

Yesterday, I was walking onto campus, and I was holding on to a Super H Mart bag with my lunch (zereshk polo) inside of it, and I was just thinking, THANK GOD, I don't have a weird complex about what kind of lunch I take to school anymore, because people just stop caring about what other people do.  Or thank god that I can just sit at a table on my own and not have to worry about being called "the loser" or "the weird loner girl."  Well.  Or maybe people say it and I just don't care anymore.  Because literally, I just dont care.

And then that makes me think, well maybe it was because I had to hold my own in seventh grade and defend myself against all the mean bullies who made fun of my hair and my braces and my height and the hair on my arms that make me not care anymore because I figure, I'll have friends who don't care about what I'm like and I can say whatever I want and dress however I want, and they'll just love me and I'll just love them.

But still.  Seventh grade sucked.