Our family has officially made the transition. We have unwillingly
breached the barrier and found ourselves on the other side. Things are bad.
We have a middle schooler now.
Life was so much simpler last year when Son Number One was
still a sixth-grader. For starters, he was still at the same school as the other
two. The elementary school is nine feet from our house. School drop off and
pick up was a breeze.
Now, Number One goes to school all the way across town. Besides
the fact that we’re forced to actually drive the car there, the location
presents a few other challenges. A long time ago, when they built the middle
school, the Rocklin city planners decided that it would be good to bury it way back
in a residential area on a small street. To add to the fun, the only reasonable
way into the neighborhood is at an intersection with the world’s slowest
traffic light and a six-foot-long left turn lane. I regularly sit in my car, a
quarter-mile from the light, listening to five middle schoolers jabber and squinting
into the distance to count how many green arrows I’m not able to take advantage
of. It’s relaxing.
Then, a few years ago, for reasons unexplainable by actual
reasoning, the city planners decided to OK the placement of a Dutch Brothers drive-thru
coffee shack on a lot roughly the same size as Juan Valdez’s hat, AT THE SAME
DAMNED INTERSECTION. If you are not familiar with Dutch Brothers, they are a
coffee company with a cult following. At any time of the day, there are no less
than seven hundred cars lining up to get coffee from this place. It’s not as if
it’s free beer, so I can only assume they somehow infuse crack cocaine into the
coffee during the brewing process. That’s the only logical explanation for the
crowds.
Speaking of drugs, I imagine this is how the city planning
meeting went:
City Planner One: “Dude, Dutch Bros wants to put a coffee
place there.” [pointing to the map and exhaling a huge cloud of bong smoke]
City Planner Two: [taking a rip off the bong] “Cool. Wait.
Doesn’t that intersection get kinda crowded sometimes, bro?”
One: “Yeah, man, ‘cause of the school. Have you ever had
Dutch Bros coffee, man? I think they put crack in it.”
Two: “Sweet, bro. If we say yes, do you think they’ll give
us free donuts?”
One: “Totally.”
Two: “Sweet.”
[more bong hits]
So, between the school traffic and the drug traffic, a
helicopter is really starting to look like a cost-effective option for our middle
school carpool group.
Unfortunately, the hassle of getting Son Number One and his
friends to and from school now is the least of our middle school problems. The
main problem is that we have a middle
schooler. If you don’t have one, let me explain.
We’ve been noticing a change in Son Number One’s behavior for
some time now. Initially, we chalked it up to him just being grumpy because he
considered his two younger brothers to be annoying. That was an easy
explanation, since they are very
annoying. Very.
But the seventh grade orientation slideshow enlightened us
to what was really going on. It seems he has something in his brain called a
prefrontal cortex, which is Latin for “is this thing on?”. Most adults you meet
have smoothly functioning prefrontal cortexes, but all middle schoolers
have crappy ones.
Wherever and whatever the prefrontal cortex is, it’s the
least-developed part of the adolescent brain. That is great news, since it’s
apparently in charge of these things:
*Self control
*Setting goals
*Prioritizing tasks
*Making sound judgements
*Planning and organizing multiple tasks
*Control of moods and impulses
*The ability to reason
*Determining right from wrong
*Determining cause and effect
That list, and the fact that Son Number One’s brain isn’t
good at any of it, make so much sense now.
1) Lack of self control -
Me: “Don’t do that again.”
Him: [immediately does it again]
Me: “Now, you’re in trouble.”
Him: “Why?”
2) Bad at setting goals – That explains why his only discernable
goal is to eat.
3) Bad at prioritizing, planning, and organizing multiple
tasks – That explains why I saw him make a sandwich, put it in the dog’s bowl, kick
off only one of his shoes, try to take a bite out of the remote control, and then
put his sock in the fridge.
4) Bad at reasoning and determining cause and effect – See Number
1.
5) Bad at making sound judgements – Can’t wait for him to
get his driver’s license!
6) Little to no control over moods and impulses – This explains
why he’s like living with a schizophrenic spider monkey.
7) Determining right from wrong –
“Please don’t grab your little brother by the ear and neck
and try to fling him down the stairs.”
“But, he breathed on my arm.”
(Also see Number 1, 4, 5, and 6.)
Unfortunately, just because we know why he’s so weird right
now, doesn’t change the fact that we have to live with it. I guess all we can
do is ride it out, and hope all the parts of his cortex, prefrontal and
otherwise, start working correctly as soon as possible.
One thing, however, I’ve already learned from middle school –
If things go south and his brain never gets any better at operating properly,
all hope is not lost. He can always get a job as a city
planner.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen
Have you found anything remotely similar as far as the colored pieces on DHGate?
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