Yesterday, I went back to my middle school to watch a close family friend graduate from eighth grade. Other than a cursory tour that I'd given my cousin a couple of years back, it was my first time stepping into my middle school since I myself had graduated seven years ago. The whole experience gave me so much to think about that I had to write a blog about it.
I arrived about ten minutes late and to my chagrin, I missed the processional. I came in through the back of the gym where the graduation was taking place, and I saw that the bleachers, which are small to begin with, were almost empty. There were chairs set up on the gym floor and almost all the attendees as well as the band were in the chairs. It was the smallest graduation I'd been to in a while. I'd forgotten just how small my middle school was. As I came in by the bleachers, some of the sixth and seventh graders looked at me (naturally), and I suddenly felt very awkward. Thank God, my friend's dad showed up around the same time as me, and I found him and a seat almost immediately after that.
I arrived just in time for the student speeches. A couple of students spoke about all the good memories they had of elementary and middle school (since everyone in the middle school went to the same elementary school). As expected, they sounded very fond of their time there. As I recounted my own memories of middle school, I felt awkward again. The students spoke of a strong community, of having good friends for life, while I remembered feeling excluded almost all the time and wondering if I would ever have any friends. What made it worse was knowing that my poor friend hadn't fared much better than me. Not much had changed in seven years.
It certainly wasn't all bad, though. I loved elementary school, so it made me happy when the students talked about memories from there. I happened to sit behind a couple of teachers from elementary school who still remembered me and were eager to hear about how my life had been going. It was really nice to see them. Also, one of the student speakers talked about the various achievements of my middle school's sports and academic teams over the past year, and it was funny to listen to because again, nothing had really changed in seven years. The basketball teams were still terrible. Cross country, volleyball and wrestling were decent, and an eighth grader had to miss graduation because he was competing at the National Spelling Bee. Same academics and athletics.
They presented a couple of awards, and then they called up all 48 students to get their diplomas. I was so proud of my friend. Many of the girls impressed me by wearing fashionable short dresses and extremely high heels that I can't even wear now at age 20, but my friend wore a silver-grey floor length dress with gold jewelry and her hair up in a bun. She looked so unique and elegant and classy. When I took pictures with her, she looked a lot better than I did.
After the graduation ceremony, we went to a nearby hotel for the after party. When I'd graduated, I hadn't even gone to my after party, so it was all new to me. As it happened, my friend's family and I ended up next to the new principal and the new superintendent, both of whom were very nice. After dinner, we watched a special movie that some students or the PTA had made, showing memories and the students answering various questions about their experiences. One of the questions they asked, naturally, was what the kids wanted to do with their future. Everyone had pretty high goals, which was good, but my friend made me proud again when she said she wanted to do something that made her happy and helped people.
After the movie, the dancing began. At first it was awkward to even watch the middle schoolers dance, let alone get on the dance floor. But as time went on and they played songs that the adults and I liked (namely the Cuban Shuffle), I got onto the floor to dance, though I generally kept my distance from the graduates as it was their night. Around this time I met a former classmate whose sister had graduated that night. I believe we were the only twenty-somethings who stayed for the dancing, so I was happy that neither of us would have to be alone. We got kiddie cocktails at the bar (she doesn't drink much and I'm not 21 yet) and had fun together.
The graduates danced in a very tight circle which didn't even take up the entire dance floor. My friend alternated between dancing in the circle and coming out to dance with her mom or me and my classmate. At one point, she was with me and she was looking at the circle but she wasn't sure if she could enter in. On the outside of the circle, I saw another girl in a beige dress and shorter heels who had won three big awards during the ceremony and had given the first student speech. I recognized her immediately. The girl looked back, and when she saw my friend hesitating, she took my friend's hand and pulled her into the circle to dance with the others. You don't forget people like that. The girl was quite the big shot, and she could have easily blended in with the popular group, yet she was still nice to people who weren't as popular as her. There was a girl like that in my graduating class who always at least tried to make me feel included. Her name was Katherine, but everyone called her K.K. I haven't forgotten her to this day, and I don't think I ever will.
I drove my friend home that night, and after I got home I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was quite the bag of mixed feelings. Memories flooded my head throughout the ceremony and even the dance, and it was interesting how that same themes of awkwardness and loneliness that had defined my middle school experience came back to see me again, as if they were old friends. I'm certainly not nostalgic for middle school at all, but I'm not angry about my experience either; I think it gave me a lot of compassion and made me stronger, and I can see that in my friend too. Also, I made friends in high school and college, so that awkwardness phase was definitely past for me. Coming back, it just felt like looking through a scrapbook and thinking through all the memories, good and not so good. My biggest hope now is that my friend has a wonderful high school experience so that if she ever comes back for a graduation ceremony, she'll feel the same way as I do.