Middle School Wisdom

Words of wisdom from middle schoolers who have been there, done that. Listen wisely, Grasshopper, lest you repeat the same errors.

1. If you are crazy hungry, and chocolate is your thing, be careful if you find the librarian's stash of chocolate brownie Fiber One bars. When you take four of them and eat them all at once during the passing period, your sins will betray you soon in the form of multiple and urgent trips to the bathroom.

2. Dye a wild blue streak in your hair. When your principal sends you home with the admonition to not come back until it's a natural hair color, dye it  blonde. Then, when your friends tell you "it just doesn't look like you", dye it jet black. Do not let it surprise you when your hair that is now the texture of aged straw falls out in chunks. But don't despair. The bald look might become the new in thing.

3. You see rappers on MTV who have shaved sections of their eyebrows off. You replicate their deed, because come on, face it, rappers are the shizz and the arbiters of high fashion. You get to school and are pulled into the principal's office. Your dad arrives at school after the principal's call to him. He has strong words to say about your rappers. He asks the principal for a black Sharpie marker. She gives him one. Your dad then colors in your eyebrows with the black Sharpie. It is a risky move to let your dad color in your eyebrows when he's angry because now you are a dead ringer for Groucho Marx.

4. You know your teacher has serious rodent trauma. She's told your class how she freaks when she sees one. Do not be surprised, then, when you decide to prank her by putting a realistic plastic rat on her desk chair that she steps on both your feet  hard as she runs screaming past you out the classroom door.

5. You sneak a forbidden cell phone into class and hide it in the left side of your bra. You congratulate yourself in first period math class because you even remembered to turn the ringer off. Think quickly when you realize the phone is set to vibrate and that it does so repeatedly until the teacher stops teaching and stares at you. Tell her you had a heart pacemaker installed over the weekend and that's what is actually doing the vibrating. Those teachers are gullible. They'll believe anything you tell them.

6.  Become aware after class has started that someone around you has stepped in dog poop on the way to school. People are sniffing and contorting their faces in disgust. Crack a loud joke about what kind of a loser steps in dog poop and doesn't even know it. As the teacher tracks the dog poop from the door straight to your desk, peek at the bottom of your shoe and  realize that loser is YOU.

7.  You are naive and you look up to your older brother who is full of worldly knowledge. When your teacher assigns the class to write a poem near Valentine's Day, ask your brother's help in finding just the right word to describe a unique present a boy can give to a girl to win her love. When you read the poem in class and the teacher turns red and gasps and some of the other kids snicker in shock, take the time to realize you shouldn't have been so trusting. Your teacher hands you a dictionary and you know then your prankster brother has actually given you a word that describes a very specific sexual act.

Learn from the stories of those who have gone before you, wise middle schoolers. Ignore not the lessons from the past.