RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

I Used to be Evil

The other day I got my 10-year high school reunion invite in the mail. That’s a story in itself and I’ll write just a few words about its overwhelming incompetence. Apparently my high school – Philly’s Central High – paid a company called “Reunion Central” to put together this magical evening. RC certainly didn’t dazzle my old school with their cutting edge website. Please, please click this link: [link]

Apparently their graphic design department isn’t so hot either. The flier I got in the mail looks like something put together by a promising group of mentally handicapped 3rd graders with an ‘89 Mac and a B&W Xerox. Actually, it looked a lot like the website: [link]

Obviously RC’s strengths aren’t in marketing, but maybe they put on a good event. Hosted at Dave and Busters for a mere $56, I can go observe just how severely the potential once held by last generations next generation has been crushed under the weight of social conformity.

I won’t be going.

But moving on to the point of this post, the reunion didn’t make me feel old. What made me feel old was looking up a long lost friend on myspace earlier today. While browsing through his friends, I saw another familiar name.

But first a little background.

Middle School isn’t fun for anyone and sometimes kids are mean. My friends were the social outcasts. We were too weird and lazy to be nerds. We were too nerdy and weird to be cool. Even if we didn’t necessarily like each other, we stuck together out of necessity. Eventually we got to high school and became cooler than anyone. I have no idea how that works.

But during middle school we were devastatingly mean. I wholeheartedly admit the shame that I feel for my behavior. As social bottom feeders, we tore others down where we could. As sexual maturity began to cloud our perception we – in our confusion – targeted the outcast girls with our ridicule. For example, even though we became pretty good friends in high school, we proudly put the fat girl on medication. Seems that a 200 lb. 13-year-old can’t take constant, vicious, personal attacks about her appearance. We joked about it years later.

While browsing myspace today, I didn’t run across the fat girl. It was someone else from middle school. It was the flat-chested girl. Back then she was thin, snotty and poorly developed. She always made fun of us, so one day when a tissue may or may have not have fallen out of her bra and we smelled blood and attacked. For the rest of middle school, there were relentless verbal assaults regarding her lack of breasts and the tissue incident.

Being a late bloomer, she eventually filled out to Coors Light commercial standards and through high school, always made a point of having us notice her freshly grown breasts. But unlike the fat girl she never forgave us. Considering that the girls were at least as mean to us as we were to them, that’s a shame… but still perfectly understandable.

My memory of her is still in middle school. In my mind, she hasn’t aged. When I search for an image in my head, middle school is what appears. That’s why today, when I saw her myspace profile pic with her lying back with a newborn infant sleeping on her chest, I felt old.

Of course I’m not old, but seeing a person transform in an instant from prepubescent middle schooler to mature and happy mother is a strange and new experience.

That’s all for now.