I haven’t written anything on this blog in three years. THREE! Anyhow, I’m going through some of my older posts that I had switched from published to draft, and came across this one. Oh, the nostalgia.
We wore wide-leg jeans, baby-doll shirts, and Doc Martens (only when we found them on sale). Brown liner outlined our natural pink lips and Rave Hairspray sealed our big bangs in place. It was after elementary school, before high school. T.L.C. taught us about friendships and sex. Boyz II Men taught us about love. When Tupac died, we hugged and cried. Our generation lost an artist who spoke his mind. We had a connection to him. We took bike rides to the park at dusk when we were too cool to swing. Instead we coughed smoke from our first cigarettes while leaning against the monkey bars. We were mallrats, too. Kayla’s dad drove us in his four-seater every Friday night. Someone always got hump. No one buckled. We hung out at the mall until it closed, getting only colored gel pens and butterflies in our bellies from holding hands with boys. We always let go because of the sweat between our palms. At school we used our new pens to write notes back and forth signed with messages like T.T.Y.S and L.Y.L.A.S.. Paper folded into tiny triangles and squares and traded at lockers. Friends forever. On Thursday nights, the school held dances in the gymnasium under disco lights. The Macarana, The Tootsie Roll, and C’Mon N Ride it (The Train) were our favorite songs to dance to because we all knew the moves. We wanted to be included in something, even if that something was a song. When Biggie died, we hugged and cried again. Another artist gone. The violence couldn’t be comprehended by our young minds.
We were in the middle – not children, not teens.
We didn’t care about who we were meant to be, because we were transitioning from what we were.
Photo courtesy of Brooke Cagle/Unsplash
Danielle Dayney 
Danielle, I love this from the clever title on down. The voice and flow of this piece are perfect for the memories of those tween years. Nice!
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Thank you! I was inspired by Tara last week to write something about junior high 🙂
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Brings back old memories, loved it. 🙂
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Thanks for reading!
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Took me back to that time – not children, not teens. The writing style suits this trek down memory lane – such a pleasure to read.
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Thank you!
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Great way to use a universal experience – how music anchors our memories – to drill down to your specifics.
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Thanks, Rowan 🙂 Music and smell both do that, don’t they?
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They do. Even for dogs – my inherited dachshund once wriggled through a fence because a woman walked by wearing my grandmother’s perfume.
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Awww. That is the sweetest thing 🙂 I love dogs.
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I really enjoyed the almost frenetic pace you set through this piece. That, along with the music references, brought back so many memories of that age for me.
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Thank you, Asha!
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