Ariana Brookes Brookes is a third-year
English student who knows that Diet Coke is the drink of champions.
E-mail her at [email protected].
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Oh how I miss the seventh grade! (When reading this in your head
please use a tone of strong sarcasm.) I look back on that year with
bittersweet nostalgia, the type of nostalgia deserving of a rehash
with all of you. Therefore, in the tradition of David Letterman I
now present the top five things I miss about seventh grade. (I know
David Letterman does a top 10 list, but he has other people writing
his lists for him, and I don’t.)
5. Educational math videos:
I remember “Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land” and those
somewhat unnerving math soap operas. I’d walk into math and
everyday, I’d be shocked to see that once again we were going
to learn nothing of any value.
Instead we would watch videos in which characters seemed to
center their lives around trivial mathematic facts. Detectives were
determined to solve mathematic equations and such. They drove me
crazy.
 Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin If we were going
to study math, couldn’t we at least do it in a somewhat
dignified manner? I guess those teachers knew what they were doing
though. After all, as my friend informed me, Donald Duck taught him
how to play pool. It’s true what they say about things you
see in childhood staying with you your entire life.
Sometimes I’ll be watching a soap opera of sorts and oddly
enough I’ll find myself wondering why these people are so
concerned about sex and adultery and murder when there are more
important things to worry about ““ like pi and pre-algebra
equations.
4. Coed sex education:
There was sex ed. in elementary school, sure, but it was
separated according to sex. The girls went to one classroom and the
boys went to another. I don’t know what the boys talked
about, but I know the girls’ half pretty much stunk. We
didn’t even talk about sex; we talked about menstruation.
Then one day, in seventh grade to be exact, they brought the
boys in to my sex education class and it all started to make sense
““ the sex that is. We had diagrams and this time, there were
naked boys on the ditto sheets as well.
And who can forget about those question and answer sessions? It
was kind of like a secret ballot. You could drop a question in the
box at the end of the class. The next day, the teacher would read
and answer it. Oh, the terror. You sat there with a look on your
face reflecting the pure nausea you felt as the teacher read your
question, and you prayed that no one would know it was yours.
It was a whole new world, just like in “Aladdin.”
Only this time, it wasn’t foreign places you were imagining
but that guy sitting next to you, in a little more sexual
context.
3. My bangs:
My mom would put curlers in them every night. We would curl up
the top layer and curl down the bottom layer. In the morning I
would take out the curlers and tease the whole mess until my bangs
were one big curly poof.
I loved those bangs, and apparently everyone else did too since
every girl at my school wore them. They were like an accessory and
the girl with the biggest poof was queen. Then suddenly, without
warning, the style changed and bangs had a new look.
Now you wore your bangs long and to one side, preferably in a
layer to your chin. We frantically tried to grow out our bangs fast
enough to accommodate this new style.
If you look at my junior high yearbooks, you see the result.
Poof bangs in seventh grade, “layed lock” in eighth.
I’m still waiting for another hairstyle trend as great as
those to come along. The “Rachel” shag just
didn’t do it for me.
One day, sometime soon I hope, another hairstyle will come along
which will once again unite all students in that addiction we
fondly refer to as fashion.
2. Gym class:
You’d wake up at the crack of dawn, get dressed, put on
your makeup and run your 12-year-old butt to junior high school by
7:15 a.m. By 7:30 a.m. you had to “dress out” and be
seated on your number on the blacktop.
“Dress out” ““ I’d really like to know
who came up with that ridiculous term. What does that even mean?
Why not “dress in?”
Anyhow, back to my point. You put on your makeup only to sweat
it off a half hour later. After gym, you’d run back to the
locker room with four minutes until your next class. Chaos ensued
with a locker room bathroom crowded with 20 girls frantically
applying hot pink lipstick. It was fun, loads of fun.
Let’s not forget the process of changing in front of the
20 other girls in your locker row. The size of your breasts
determined your status in the locker room. Even if you didn’t
need a bra, you had no choice but to wear one. Those gym shirts
were completely see-through, and every guy in your class would
examine your back to see if a bra strap was visible.
You tried not to gawk at the girls who actually needed a bra but
you couldn’t help it. Then you would pull on your bodysuit
(remember those?) as fast as you could and run off to math class to
watch those videos.
1. Ace of Base:
They were a band which I believed had formed for the sole
purpose of giving me ultimate pleasure. I would play that tape
(before the invasion of CDs) over and over in my room, singing at
the top of my lungs. “She’s gone tomorrow boy.”
They completely dominated my school dances, where we would all
dance in a group of our friends. It was 1992 and 12-year-olds had
not yet started to freak at school dances.
My mother didn’t like the band because one of the male
singers was supposedly anti-Semitic and a neo-Nazi. My dad liked to
tell me that they were basically just a cover band for ABBA but I
didn’t know what ABBA was, and I didn’t care. Ace of
Base rocked my world. Their songs seemed to discuss all that was
truly important in the world, and I found them incredibly
profound.
Who wanted to listen to my mother’s folk music junk when I
could listen to the best band ever? Next to Madonna, they were the
best thing since sliced bread!
Sometimes even now, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll
put on a song of Ace of Base and I’ll end up wiping away the
tears of happiness which spring up as I stare at my computer screen
and its MP3 player.