Beware 8th Graders

My wife and I were chortling the other day about several funny childhood memories. They are countless, right? Of course they are!

Here's just one, shared for no apparent reason whatsoever, other than perhaps because every time I think of it I laugh so hard peas fly out my nose. 

I remember my first day of 6th grade as if it was yesterday. I made quite a...splash.

All of us had been in the same school, grades 1-5. The move to grades 6-8 was a biggie, primarily because it was an entirely different school several miles and one big bridge away. Its scope and scale were colossal by comparison. In the course of one year, we jumped from carrying tubby-trays with Big Chief tablets and fat pencils to a campus replete with lockers, designated smoking areas, a quarter-mile track, sports fields, science labs, woodworking and welding shops, labyrinthine hallways and an amphitheater with a sound system. 

I entered this grandiose facility for the first time wearing a bright red t-shirt with gold lamé writing that read, "I am FANTASTIC!" in a big arc across the front. 

After a day of proverbial swirlies, wedgies and being placed upside down in trash cans by 8th graders, I returned home and stood--defeated--in the kitchen with my mom. "Mom--I am NOT fantastic." And whoosh, off came the shirt and into the trash can it went! 

It's surreal recalling that day--thirty years ago now.

I'm not sure what the moral is, or even if there is one.

But I can guarantee you this: I do not wear red anymore. Ever. And Hades will become tundra before I wear pronouncement-clothing again.