Mom of the year

 My daughter is 9. She is teetering on adolescence. This is a very tender spot to be in, for both of us. She is not excited or ready for her body to change, and hates the idea of her feelings and ideas changing..she feels like it's going to happen against her will (and she isn't wrong). She loves being a kid. She is still bewildered at the behavior of teens, but also is easily influenced by them if she thinks they're cool. She is already confused, so I know that means the change has begun. So, I'm all up in my feelings.  I have always talked to her and been as honest as she can understand. It's my way. But raising boys is different, with a little bit different set of worries and concerns, and my place in their stages of growing up was not at all the same as it is with my little girl. I feel very strongly that I want her to be prepared for the insanity that's coming, but I'm so scared she won't hear me...it's a fear we all have as parents, I know.   M

 As long as I'm on the subject of Jr. high trauma, I may as well note another amazingly tragic, almost too horrifying to believe drama. This one also occurred in 7th grade, but this time it involved menstruation and the 100 or so kids that rode the bus home.      In our bougie Jr high we had a pool. And those fucks they called coaches made us swim in P.E. class, because child torture was totally their kink. They didn't make us shower, thank the gods, but we did have to change together in the locker room, and the bathroom stalls did not have doors that locked. That means that privacy is not a thing, especially if you didn't have a friend in class to have your back and block you while you changed, or peed or whatever. My clothes and shoes got stolen a few times that year. They also didn't clean the stalls often enough, so that teeny little trash bin that's meant to hold 10 used menstrual pads/tampons per day, usually had 30 piled on top by 3rd period, and was not usua

     Few moments illustrate the tone of my Jr. high years quite like the Simpson’s T-shirt incident. My dad bought it for me from Spencer’s in an uncharacteristic apologetic moment for one of his drunken episodes. The show had just started that year, 1990, and it was pretty risque for us 12 year olds. EVERYONE loved it. And I had yet to see anyone at school with Simpson’s merch yet, so I was sure I would finally be the trendsetter I was meant to be.           So far in 7th grade, I was pretty invisible. Most of my friends from elementary school had changed and we could no longer relate to each other, or they found new friends that better matched the personas they were trying to achieve. The few friends I had left were players in a never ending game of 3 way calls and shit talk that none of us really wanted to participate in, but the act felt like survival. There was no way out, and being at the bottom of the social totem pole was like death. It was kill or be killed, even with your bes