KILROY: Middle school memories

Saturday night my friend and I were walking back from West Campus when we ran into a hoard of prepubescent girls. What were these preteens doing on our campus? Going to the One Direction and Big Time Rush concert at Agganis Arena. Translation: The “Jo Bros” of the future were playing in Boston on Saturday.

So as my friend and I dodged crowds of preteens and their parents, I got to thinking about my own middle school experience. The middle school years. What a wonderful time that was. Not.

In suburban Illinois, middle school meant three years of waiting at the bus stop, wearing uniforms to gym class and wondering when your parents were going to start treating you like the “adult” that you were. Scratch that. Most of my middle school memories revolve around my pursuit of what the student body deemed “cool,” i.e. owning a wardrobe from Hollister, listening to OutKast on repeat and straightening one’s hair.

Straightening my hair was the hardest part. The last time I woke up at 6 a.m. to run a straightening iron through my curls was probably, well, eighth grade. Not to say that I don’t straighten my hair now; I do. I just do it much more efficiently and not before noon. What else?

Oh, the lovely braces. No matter how “cool” the colors of your bands were, you still had a mouth full of metal, which reminds me: While it’s “fun” to match up your bands with the holidays – you know, red and green at Christmas and pink and green at Easter – it is never a good idea to wear black and orange at Halloween. People will start thinking that you don’t brush your teeth. Moving on.

Glasses. In sixth grade I wore glasses. By seventh grade I had contacts – thank God, or this section could have been a lot longer.

Gym class. Horrible – and it wasn’t just because of the oversize uniforms. If you started out your day with gym class (in Illinois gym is everyday), you had to sit in your sweat for the rest of the day. If you ended your day with gym class, chances are you’d miss your bus. There was no way to win!

Celebrity crushes. In sixth grade all the girls started talking about their celebrity crushes – Orlando Bloom, Ashton Kutcher . . .. Once in the middle of class these girls asked me to choose between Johnny Depp and Chad Michael Murray. I had no idea who those people were. I was in sixth grade. All I wanted to do was get back to reading “A Wrinkle in Time.”

The music. Halfway into our sixth grade gym class, the girls did a dance unit while the boys did wrestling. As part of the dance unit, the girls had to create dance routines, in groups of five or six, to perform in front of the rest of the class. Let’s just say that while the other groups were busy “shaking it like a Polaroid picture” my group was writing dance moves to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

So as the middle school girls rushed by in their AE jeans and cropped Abercrombie jackets, these were the memories that came rushing back to me – braces, glasses, gym class, everything. And you know what? I don’t miss it. Not one bit.

No matter how many times I shopped at Hollister or ran a straightening iron through my hair, there were still trends that I would never master – choosing the “Hey Ya” over the Cyndi Lauper or the celebrity daydreams over the books. I guess that prevented me from being the “coolest” middle schooler.

In that regard, I wonder where I would be now if I had surrendered myself to those fads? Would I like the music that I like now? Would I be reading the books that I am now? Would I even be at Boston University? I’ll never know. In sum, I can’t tell you how relieved I was to be walking back to my dorm that evening – a 20 year old in the big city. The braces are gone, the straightening iron is mastered, and middle school is behind me. Phew.

So fortunate that all that remains of middle school me is the strong work ethic, passion for reading and eclectic music taste. Oh, I guess there are still those embarrassing middle school yearbook photos. Scratch that. They’re shoved in my closet at home somewhere and they don’t really count for anything, anyway.

So I suppose that what I’m really trying to say is that on Saturday, seeing those preteens running down Comm. Ave. made me realize that I wouldn’t trade places with them for anything. Not for anything.

Meaghan Kilroy is a sophomore in the College of Communication and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at  kilroymeg@hotmail.com