The Slice: The search for middle school lessons

A case could be made that the biggest transition in a young person’s scholastic journey is the first year of middle school or junior high.

At least those first few weeks after school starts.

Yes, there are plenty of other key milestones in the march from K to 12. But the beginning of that first year after grade school can be especially fraught with anxiety and adventure.

At least that’s how it was once upon a time.

Do you remember?

Speculation about junior high women and their ability to mesmerize innocent lads with set-on-stun pulchritude.

The ever-present danger of having one’s person forcibly inserted into a hall locker by some overgrown eighth-grader who had been held back a grade multiple times.

New and harder academic subjects designed to challenge your self-esteem and prompt nightmares about quadratic equations.

Restrooms inhabited by streetsmart brutes who, according to rumors, had done time.

Roaming packs of upperclassmen on the hunt for victims.

Vice principals who admired frontier justice and were suspected of scoffing at the notion of human rights.

The list goes on. In that last spring of elementary school, alarmist sixth-graders could make the prospects of getting through the first weeks of seventh grade unscathed seem doubtful at best.

But here’s the thing. Most of us survived.

Of course, today’s kids don’t want to hear that. At least not from a parent.

But what about taking advice from their old pal Uncle Slice? It’s worth a shot.

So let’s do this. Send me your tips for surviving the first weeks of junior high or middle school. And I will pass them along before most districts are back in session.

Yes, things have changed since some of us were in school back in the log cabin days. But it’s still natural for younger kids to wonder about going to a new school populated by older students.

What advice would you offer?

Today’s Slice question: Is the concept of “school clothes” still relevant or is anything a kid happens to throw on in the morning considered suitable scholastic attire?