Thursday, July 28, 2016

My Phi is Going to Junior High so Let's Reminisce

I think another reason I am not ready for the school year to start is because this year is going to be a transition year for Phi. She is going from home-schooled to a regualr everyday junior high school. Just the thought of it makes my stomach hurt with nerves. The worst part is I have to plaster a fake smile on my face so that Phi doesn't sense my nervousness. I don't know why these kind of things make me so nervous. Always has. Even in graduate school I would get stomach aches and would not be able to sleep the night before a new semester. I would be scared of things like...
  • not being able to find my classrooms
  • not getting my locker to work
  • not finding a parking space (if you went to CSUN around 2002 you know this was a legit fear)
  • not being on the roll call sheet
  • not getting a seat
  • being late to class
  • being a ghost and not knowing it and that's why people are ignoring me but I don't know I'm a ghost so I just think people are being mean.

It just  gets weirder from there.

Now looking back junior high was such a fun time for me. Of course I had to dig through pictures to really remember it all. Maybe a little trip down memory lane will help me feel better about Phi starting junior high.

Let me start by saying that I am sorry the pics are so grainy but my junior high day were from 1989-1991 and most of these pictures were shot on a Kodak Disc Camera.

Oh you don't remember what those look are?

Let me refresh your memory..

Man I loved this camera!
So junior high,... here is a little back story. My experience was a little different than most because I went to a tiny school. About 300 kids from kinder to 8th grade. This mean I went to school with the same 25+ kids for 9 years. So junior high just meant we moved classes during the day. All of us. Together.

So remember,1998-1991 so the hair is going to be permed and the bangs are going to be sky high.

You have been warned.

I had my absolute best friend with me all day long. We got to sit next to each other practically all day long. We had lunch together and only had to separate at the end of the day because we took different buses home.

Jessica is the perfect BFF, she is smart, funny and teachers love her so we got away with pretty much anything. She is the only girl in a family full of boys and that made her braver and much more daring than me. I wouldn't have had half as much fun if it wasn't for her encouraging me.


We were in the band together and that meant we had an excuse to go to each others house.  Flute practice.

Looking back at this pictures I notice the big air, the double tongue LA Gears, the double and sometime triple socks. But I can remember the feelings. The giggles and the happiness. I remember life being so exciting during this time that talking with your friends all day, and even on the phone after school wasn't enough. You had to spend time writing notes to each other.


Keeping up on who likes who, and who asked who out. Writing out in explicit detail what our weddings to Joey McIntyre or Donnie Wahlberg would be like. Even taking the time to put together wedding invitations. (NKOTB Forever). We schemed ways to go to the little league to talk to boys who didn't go to our school.
 

Junior high was a confusing and really formative time. There were rounds of truth or dare in the hallway and lots of discussion of what french kissing really was. There may or may not have been diagrams. We were going through puberty, our bodies were changing and there was so much to learn but I had such great friends to go through it together. There was not any topic that Jessica and I did not discuss.


And of course there were boys. By 7th grade I had noticed them and they had noticed me. I remember the nerves of going to a school dance. (They were held during the day after lunch!) I was such a nervous wreck because Matthew was going to ask me to dance. A SLOW ONE. And he did, and we swayed to "Have you Seen Her" by MC Hammer. How do I remember that? Well it was written on the back of the photo as well as things like "Matthew & Elissa Forever" and MEC". We use to make these monograms of the guys initials with your first initial in the middle. This does not make sense to me now but it's what we did. So in our different colored acid washed jeans we danced and my BFF was there to take a picture so that all these years later I can still remember that feeling. The excitement and being so nervous being that close to a boy.

seriously...the jeans...

And it just a few short years it was time to shop for a graduation dress, make that oh so important decision on who you would walk into the ceremony with. (Thanks Jaime P!). I found a beautiful white dress and Jessica wore pretty peach dress with ruffles. Someone bought us corsages and we ended junior high vowing that we would be best friends forever. And we have kept that promise for 25 years and counting.


So did this stroll down memory lane: junior high edition help relieve some of my nerves about my tiny baby starting junior high school? Not really.

I am nervous that I will completely mess up the drop off line, or get the times mixed up and pick her up an hour after school gets out. Ot what if the kids don't like her clothes or her backpack?

But looking at old pictures was fun!

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