Seventh Graders

Seventh grade is a year during which students mature in many ways until, by the end of the year, they become paragons of sophistication. Before this ultimate goal can be achieved, however, they spend their time in a chrysalis, like all things that enter ugly and unenlightened and emerge bright and glorious . Almost-teenagers writhe within their cocoons until they batter the fragile walls of childhood away, finally presenting to the world the marks of their maturity: a changing facial structure marked by a handful of zits like jimmies sprinkled by a greedy toddler. This transition heaps upon their brain tissue a certain gawkiness in their movement, and the sudden realization of the importance of society; the legions of saccharine songs extolling the evils of an exaltation they have yet to feel and bitter eulogies bemoaning the pains of a condition they cannot claim become the soundtrack of their own drama; the darkening tones of their bearing and dress and makeup convey with unfailing accuracy their awareness of the bitterness of middle-class life.

Once discovered, life’s unfairness and insurmountable woes are overwhelming and the exploration of these woes is inexhaustible; the seventh grader has just realized that his comfortable cocoon has burst, and as the sterilized fragments fall from the height his new wings achieve, he loses the absurd notion that he will ever be as comfortable again. The disappointment and the shock produced by this disillusionment gives rise to the realization that the rest of the world—teachers, family, peers, the opposite sex--doesn’t appreciate as much as they should everything he does and how hard he works. He realizes with a jolt of self-righteousness that he should now be as powerful and attractive and self-assured as the high school senior, who, after all, is a teenager just like him. Add all this together and it is a wonder that the seventh grader is as productive as he is.

The angst of the seventh grader pervades the brightest of days, armor against the intrusive rays of the sun as destructive as a finger stroking the wings of a butterfly. His defenses are already stretched to the breaking point by the torments of a family woefully lacking in the sort of empathy known to the general populace as “extra-sensory perception,” as well as the ever-present, ever-potent, ever-devastating criticism, voiced and unvoiced, of his peers. Before his entrance into adolescence, the seventh grader had not appreciated the constructive power of that criticism, which remained as unrealized as unexploded ordnance remains impotent, but now it becomes of uttermost importance: when it is negative, it is devastating; when it is positive, it is as miraculous and ephemeral as the feathers that fall from his new wings on the slightest provocation.

The urgings and commands of parents and other such individuals not suave enough to be idolized become ridiculous, outdated, and self-serving, and it is in the best interest of the seventh grader that he ignores them. They are completely ungrateful when the seventh grader extends the open hand of constructive criticism meant to expand the tastes of the other to fit the mold the seventh grader strives to. Insensible to their own failure to measure up, they ignore his help, casting a hard eye on the colors of his new wings. Yes, the life of the seventh grader is filled with woe, through which the seventh grader does his best to fly, avoiding the landmines set by the inadequacies of a sycophantic family and the harsh arena of teenage society and the failure of their bodies to become measure up to those around them.