Middle School Cool
WORDS FROM W.W. April 23, 2019
I was never one of the cool kids in school. It’s hard being cool when you’re a 4 foot 8 inch eighth grader with nerdy looking glasses. I was a cute kid, but eighth grade girls had moved past cute and had started looking for handsome, manly, and hints of voices that had suddenly started getting lower. I was a high-pitched, miniature, buzzcut boy who always wore clothes from the J.C. Penney’s store my mom worked at. Randy McDaniels was cool! He was 6 foot one inch, a great athlete, and the dream of most of the females in our class. Of course, when Randy entered his senior year he was still six foot one! He had just received an advance on his masculinity that the rest of his classmates wouldn’t catch up on for a couple of years.
As I walk down the hallways of Timberview Middle School nowadays I notice cool and uncool. That is, what students perceive as cool!
For instance, having a cell phone in your hand is a prerequisite to even being considered cool. To be talking to Joey and without hesitation look at your cell phone and text Charley that you’ll see him at lunch…that’s in the preface of the book on cool.
In fact, up-to-date technology is the first chapter in the book How to Be Cool In Middle School In Ten Easy Diagrammed With Pictures Steps. Cool students walk down the hallways with Apple AirPods in their ears. They are an indication that overpriced merchandise is not an obstacle for them…or their parents’ credit card. Having an Apple Watch is an even greater advance in the Kingdom of Coolness! In saying those things I have to admit that I pull out my gold MacBook at Starbucks with an air of prideful arrogance!
Middle school cool kids stand in the middle of the hallway at the height of student traffic moments and expect everyone else to detour around them. It’s their position of royalty with the feel of their subjects keeping their distance from them. If uncool students did that they would be trampled by the stampeding herd!
Uncool kids wear things like hair headbands with cat ears attached. Cool kids wear hair apparel with a Nike swoosh prominently displayed!
Cool kids have their parents deliver Chick-Fil-A to them for lunch. Uncool kids bring Lunchables or sandwiches made with white bread.
Cool kids go to school athletic contests and sit in the upper corner of the bleachers with their cell phones and make inappropriate remarks about uncool classmates. Actually watching the game that is being played is not cool, unless someone they are infatuated with is playing.
Cool kids moan and groan about going to Language Arts and Math. Depending on whether the teacher is considered cool or not, it may be acceptable to seem interested in the Science and Social Studies classes.
Cool kids ask to go to the restroom at least twice a day and take their time in the venture. Cool kids have cool looking water bottles, also.
Cool kids run for student council and get elected even though they have no interest in making any decisions or planning any initiatives. Uncool kids, who would be awesome in getting some things done, never get elected!
Cool kids show up in the morning with their Starbucks Frappuccinos. Uncool kids have juice boxes.
Middle school coolness is the predecessor to high school cockiness. It’s like the incubator for developing distorted perspectives on what’s important in life. Into the mash of that heated setting teachers try to lead students to deeper life understandings and principles.
And, you know something? Bottom line, middle school teachers are the ones who are really the cool ones!
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Words from WW Blog 
April 26, 2019 at 1:15 pm
Now Bill, you know that you, Mike Bowman and I were the coolest by far! You mentioned Randy McDaniel. Did you know that Randy passed away at age 45 in 1999? He picked up a rare disease from exposure to bird droppings. When the doctors figured it out it was too late. Anyway, thanks for the flash back to good old South Zanesville! I hope all is well with you, old friend.
Terry
April 26, 2019 at 7:43 pm
Sorry to hear about Randy! Wow! Just think…that was 20 years ago! I hope to come to Ohio this summer to see my sister and her family. They live across the river from Huntington, West Virginia. Maybe I could drive up your way and have lunch with you some day. Speaking of Mike Bowman, whatever happened to him?