Surviving Middle School: Navigating the Halls, Riding the Social Roller Coaster, and Unmasking the Real You - Softcover

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Luke Reynolds taught in public schools for many years before becoming an assistant professor of education at Endicott College. He is the author of the Fantastic Failures books, Surviving Middle School, The Looney Experiment, Braver Than I Thought, and the picture books If My Love Were a Fire Truck and Bedtime Blastoff!. He and his wife, Jennifer, have four sons, and they live in Massachusetts, where they endeavor to be outside and exploring as much as possible.

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Surviving Middle School
Here’s where you see what a secret agent of the space gnomes, the colors purple and pink, President Teddy Roosevelt, and talking to yourself (out loud) all have in common. Hint: the answer is not that you can dip them all in chocolate sauce and then put them on your ice cream as a topping.

A STORY ABOUT A SHIRT

One of my seventh-grade students arrived early to class one day. Let’s call him Perspicacious so that we can hide his real name (which was Henry). Perspicacious wanted more than anything to be popular. Perspicacious tried to make sure he wore the right clothes with all the right brand names on them; he tried to laugh at the right times; he tried to get his biceps to be just the right size. So this one day, Perspicacious walked into my classroom wearing a purple shirt. I thought it looked awesome. It had buttons right down the front, a collar so sharp you could slice a finger on it, and the sleeves rolled up like he was ready to build a house.

Perspicacious: Do you like my new shirt, Mr. Reynolds?

Me: Yeah, it’s awesome, man. I need to get one too, because I bet my wife, Jennifer, will love me in a shirt that looks as good as that one.

Perspicacious smiled and then started to open up his backpack and pull out some books and his binder. The sun was shining in full force even though it was winter in New England. Soon, other students began to trickle into the classroom. One of the first guys in the door (we’ll call him Foggy Foggerson), brought his hand up to cover his mouth and started laughing as he pointed at Perspicacious’s purple shirt.

Foggy Foggerson: Man, are you pretending to be Barney or something? Are you a purple dinosaur?

Perspicacious’s just-beaming face grew red and shot downward like he was inspecting the floor for ants. Foggy Foggerson continued to laugh, and as other students walked into the classroom, they followed Foggy Foggerson’s example and laughed at Perspicacious’s purple shirt.

I stood up from my desk and asked Foggy Foggerson to come out into the hallway with me. The laughter died down immediately. Foggy Foggerson got an earful in the hall from me, but the silence that ensued inside the classroom was crushing Perspicacious. When I came back into the classroom with Foggy Foggerson in tow, Perspicacious asked me if he could use the bathroom. He came back wearing a white T-shirt—his undershirt—instead of the purple shirt he’d thought was so dang suave only a few minutes before.



So what happened? The purple shirt didn’t suddenly, all by itself, become something Perspicacious hated. Foggy Foggerson used the potent words of comparison to convince Perspicacious that his wardrobe was severely lacking. Ugly. Laughable.

Comparing can help us in some ways—say, for instance, when we are comparing how much butter is on one slice of garlic bread versus another, and we need to consider how buttery we’re feeling. But in middle school, comparison means thinking about how you measure up against someone else. And often, it sure feels like you don’t. Something you absolutely love and swear by is fodder for someone else to laugh at and totally mock. The music you listen to, the way you wear your hair, the grades you get, the people you’re friends with, the movies you like—heck, even the color of your eyes. Everything is up for comparison, and if you don’t learn to let yourself love what you actually love (instead of what everyone else tells you to love), comparison is going to rob you of everything you enjoy and so much of who you are, the way it did to Perspicacious that morning.

Every student I have ever taught in middle school has always carried around in his or her head a little voice that whispered things like: You’re not as good as her. You’re not as tough as him. You didn’t get grades as high as she did. You’re not as hot as he is. You’re not as funny as she is. You’re not as popular as he is. Your clothes don’t look as cool or cute or tough or sexy as his or hers or theirs . . .

So what can be done? How could Perspicacious find the same joy in his purple shirt that he’d had when he first entered class that morning, before comparison (which was speaking through Foggy Foggerson) stole that joy away?

A DEAD PRESIDENT SPEAKS TO STOP THE SPACE GNOMES

A very close friend of mine once shared with me the big secret of how comparison works. Once we know the secret of how something works, it’s a lot easier to beat it. Consider your favorite video game, a softball match, a swimming competition, an upcoming test, or any other challenge you face: as soon as you know how the game really works, everything makes a lot more sense. Once you get the rules and see how to practice, you can make it to the next level or win the game or ace the test. The problem is that most of us don’t ever learn the real truth about comparison. Instead, we keep thinking that comparison is good, that it’s somehow right to see how we measure up against everyone else—from test scores to styles to biceps to breasts. It’s not.

So if comparison is definitely not good, then what exactly is it? And how do we know for sure? The real scoop about comparison is that it is actually an elite secret agent of the space gnomes. Its job? Yup: stealing. Comparison is out for one thing and one thing alone: to steal joy. Imagine this: You are sitting at your dinner table when out comes a whole plate of warm, buttery goodness in the shape of garlic bread. It is soft. It is squishy. It positively makes your mouth salivate and your skin get goose bumps while your tongue falls out of your mouth and you actually start panting and—

Bam! An elite agent of the space gnomes busts into your dining room and swipes the garlic bread. The whole loaf.

Gone!

Ahhhh!

And who was that elite space-gnomey secret agent? That agent was Comparison, who is nothing more than a garlic bread bandit, a thief of your almost-joy.



But don’t just take my word for it. I’ve got an actual quote to prove it to you. Shrouded in mystery—no one knows for sure who said it—this single line tells us the truth about who Comparison really is. And even though no one really knows who first said the line, some people think a dead president said it (before he died, of course). And I happen to agree.

So here’s the real scoop about Comparison. Are you ready?

Are you sure?

Then let’s scoop it up. President Teddy Roosevelt (we think, but aren’t certain) said: “Comparison is the thief of joy.”

My brother-in-law, Paul, shared those powerful words with me a long time ago, back before cell phones could take pictures. (By the way, that thieving Comparison absolutely loves to steal your joy by having you look at other kids’ cell phone pictures. Comparison robs by saying: You need to look/act/think more like her and him and this clip and that image and everything except who you really are!)

In middle school, you’re going to find (or you’ve already found, if you’re a student now) that a thousand times a day, a small voice inside your head is going to ask you to compare yourself with everyone else around you. And even if you’re able to quiet down that voice a little—say, when you’re laughing and having fun and relaxed and learning and excited—then it often...