MPT #10 7th grade: misunderstood and what didn't happen

oh man, 7th grade was rough for me...one of the roughest of my childhood years...i'm not sure if it was all the hormones and puberty stuff (mine were late to kick in remember) but everything was so dramatic and i was so emotional and heart broken over things...cara was still my best friend (here you finally get to see a better close-up of her)...we had one of our biggest fights complete with pages and pages of lined 3 ring notebook paper notes trying to explain ourselves and i remember it ended with her not wanting to be my friend anymore and me running out of the classroom sobbing and so i got a drink of water at the drinking fountain to calm down and when i came back in she said something like "you aren't really upset, you just put water on your face to look like you were crying"...i felt so misunderstood which was a common theme through most of my childhood and life...i'm sure i wrote some really mean things to her, too...i know once she had boyfriends i always told them like the worst things i could think of about her because i was jealous...honestly we were such close friends it felt like we "broke up" a few times! or maybe it is because i never had boyfriends...i was quick to become the confidant or adviser to the boys...the perpetual "friend" instead of "girlfriend"...

i also have a very vivid memory of the "in" colors for the couple years i was in junior high...anything florescent! i'll have to dig up some photos of these...and "feathered" hair...this was NOT an attractive style on me...remember i was already awkward being so tall and not growing into my big size but a late bloomer...no period until high school...no first kiss...no boyfriend...i think this year was more marked by what DIDN'T happen...i'll be curious to read the other posts!

i also remember the "cool" or "in" crowd definitely became a lot more pronounced this year...cara and i were kind of off on our own though there were lots of guys interested in her...

school became challenging for the first time for me...i always enjoyed learning and still do but i remember having to work at it for the first time this year...i had a wonderful english teacher, ms. taber who taught me a LOT about grammar (sorry you can't tell that in my posts!)...

here is a family photo from that time...those horrible collars make my sister and i look like quakers or pilgrims or something but you can see we both had the feathered hair...

i've never been good with style...currently i'm fairly ecclectic and "hippy" in throwing together comfortable and colorful clothes but back in the day the way you dressed and how you did your hair and make-up really mattered...so i definitely failed at all of those. i remember cara was good at both and would give me advice and/or do my make-up...i suppose i eventually rebelled or found my own style by NOT wearing make-up...or more likely because my mom would say things like "you would look so much prettier if you wore a little make-up"...sure way to get a teen to NOT wear make-up...

i only had a couple minutes to write something so i'll try to edit this post and write more over the weekend...finally wrote 6th grade if you are interested...i really want to go back and read all yours...just haven't found the time...i did start keeping a really regular journal in 7th grade so it would be interesting to put some of the things i wrote about in here...now to find it....

i'm recording my childhood one year every friday through MPT "mommy's piggytales"...thanks for joining me!