My brother got braces yesterday and they're Steelers colors.  My brother got braces yesterday and in August he will be starting 6th grade on 6C.  That was the team I was on.  In August my brother will start the 6th grade on my team but unlike me, he probably won't find his middle school years to be the most awkward years of his life, braces or no.  My brother will probably not be awkward because other kids like him.  Other kids like him, so my brother will probably be popular. 

And you know what, if you aren't, like, popular as a child, well you're pretty much doomed for,like, life.  OH MY GOD, for real.  If you don't climb the social ladder by stepping on loser freak people to fit into the right group at the right time then you have, like, failed.  You won't get into college or have a successful life or, like, any of that.  Learn -- and learn while you're young -- that if you aren't, like, popular in school, well you might as well just, like, give up on life because no one will ever like you.  If you don't do what all of the other kids do then you are not cool and being cool is everything.  Duh.  If you find yourself in a pickle just make it known that, like, you were once popular in middle school or high school and you know what?  Everything will be perfect!  LIKE, OH MY GOD!  Just perfect.

Do you remember how every Friday night Waterworks Cinemas would be packed with Dorseyville Middle Schoolers seeing a movie?  If you went to Dorseyville Middle School and you didn't go see a movie with all of your popular little friends every Friday night then you obviously weren't cool.  Maybe this is where I apparently went "wrong."  I didn't go out every Friday night to see a movie and then sit around in Barnes and Noble pretending to like coffee afterwards.  I guess that since I was never part of the movie/Barnes and Noble crowd I also, probably for the same reasons (although what those reasons are I do not know), didn't participate when, in high school, everyone started moving away from movies and coffee-sipping to creating their own drama and alcohol-guzzling.  But you know what, I didn't move to the other extreme either.  I didn't become an angsty teen who wore all black clothing with chains, who drew crosses over my eyes with heavy black eyeliner, who dyed my spiked hair in all sorts of strange colors.  Ahaha, emo kids.  Let's all be individuals together by dressing the same and doing our hair the same way!  Please tell me what you are angry about.  Maybe I'm angry about it too.  Then we can fight the norm by being different in the same ways.

How is it that all popular kids find each other and befriend each other?  Every now and then a cool kid will accidentally befriend a loser, but as soon as they realize their mistake they ditch the unpopular kid and somehow just fit into the popular crowd.  And how is it that all emo kids find each other and befriend each other?  Meanwhile, the rest of us who don't really fit into a category find each other and become friends because really, what choice did we have?  No one else wanted us.  Not that I don't like my friends.  I adore them, which is surprising because upon close inspection, we're actually not all that similar.  Perhaps we all found each other because we all knew that secretly, one day, we're all just going to become normal adults.  Most of us anyway.  The popular kids' popularity won't matter in the real world and the emo kids will get normal hair and carry not chains but briefcases to their normal jobs.  Or maybe we're all just too many years too late. 

Mara and I decided to wander past all of the useless stores in the Mills yesterday and wondered why all of the people who we saw where bunches of giggling and obviously cool middle schoolers or packs of scowling emo preteens.  And then we realized that it was because most other people in our age group were probably getting high or drunk or impregnated or all of the above.  As everyone else downed alcohol Mara and Jane were experiencing the middle school thing to do:  Movie and coffee afterwards.  In fact, we ran into and talked with -- at -- a group of collar-popping, glitter eye shadow-wearing middle schoolers.  Their preppy shirts were pretty bright but alas, they were not.


Boy:  Hey, ya know what the Imax is?

Jane:  It's a massive movie screen.

Boy (while performing some odd clutching motion at his head/face):  Oh ... Do you wear GOGGLES!!!?

Mara & Jane:  No.

Boy (looking confused):  Oh ... Is it 3D!!!?

Mara & Jane:  No.

Boy:  Have you been to the Science Center?  They have that ... that ... really cool thing ...

Mara:  That's the Omnimax.

Boy:  What's that?

Jane:  A big dome screen that's all around you.

Boy:  So what's the Imax?

Jane:  A big rectangular screen.

Boy:  Then what are the regular screens?

Mara:  Smaller rectangular screens.

Boy (turning to friends):  Whoa ... Hey guys!  Let's go to the Imax!!!!


Mara and I skipped straight to tall (Why is the small called a "tall?"  I hate this.  But that's a different rant.) mocha frappachinos after this conversation. 

Ah middle school ... I hope my brother has an easier time with it than I did ... I think it's where I went wrong with my life.  I'm going to go reinvent myself at CMU as a popular-emo-jock-whore. 

Because it all matters in the real world.