on growing up | Sarah Markley

The transition from sixth grade to seventh grade is a giant one.

You used to be a big fish in the small stagnant pond of sixth grade. Now you are a little fish in the big stagnant pond of junior high.
People used to know you in the lunch room, on the playground, in the office. Now NO ONE remembers your name. Or that you go to school there. Or that you exist.
The Cafetorium is the coolest place to hang out.
Sweat, odor and razors are now a part of your daily life.
And my personal favorite, you begin to hug your friends.

When you get to school and you see anyone you recognize at any of the lockers, there is an immediate hug.

OH MY GOSH, it’s Julie and Jenny! {hug, hug}. What’s up? How are you? Did you watch Who’s The Boss yesterday? Did you talk to Jessica on the phone last night? How’s she doing? Is she still sick?

And there are hugs all around as if Julie and Jenny and I haven’t seen each other in months or weeks.

In sixth grade, hugs were reserved for graduation, for end of the year parties, and when Jeremy Watson and whomever he was “going around” with at the time were hanging out near his really cool BMX after school. {It’s okay. My Jeremy Watson crush was short lived: he never tied his shoes or washed his hands.}

So when I arrived on the seventh grade scene and saw immense and frequent bouts of hugging, I thought (I kid you not):

I’m so glad the world isn’t getting worse. It’s actually getting better because everyone has begun to hug. EVERYONE HAS BEGUN TO HUG and it began with my seventh grade class. We actually invented the hug-when-you-see-someone form of greeting and someday they’ll trace it all back to us.

I can’t make this stuff up. I really thought this.

Naivete. Gullibility. Innocence. Whatever you want to call it. We knew we weren’t cool because the 8th graders made sure we knew that, but somehow we thought we might be able to change the world.

I couldn’t translate the shift in friendly affection as simply a slight SLIGHT maturity in us, a shift in our age, or that we now had less familiar people around us all the time. I thought we had completely and utterly invented the hug.

I was a sweaty idealist and I honestly didn’t realize people had been hugging in this way for a very long time.

There really is nothing new under the sun. Solomon had it right. Sometimes I laugh when I think that fifteen year old girls think that skinny jeans were invented for them, that it’s something NEW to discuss theology with a cigar in one hand and a beer in the other or that “social justice” is something entirely invented between 2010 and now.

It’s all been here before. We wore leggings in the eighties, CS Lewis drank a beer or two, and people have been working to care for the poor and marginalized for centuries.

But it’s new to us and that’s what’s important. It’s okay to be an idealist. It really is.

It’s okay to think we invented hugging. It’s okay to walk on the edge by discussing the Love and Grace and Hell while imbibing and it’s very okay to think that our new non-profit and for-profit orgs who are participating in social justice causes are cool.

We are children of the age we live in and it is really hard to translate our experiences into the perspective of the timelessness of the history of the world. It’s hard to exist outside of this tiny spot we live in.

Like 7^th grade.

So drink a beer (if you are of age and do it responsibly), wear your leggings (if they aren’t see through and if you aren’t a boy) and buy your fair-trade coffee (unless you are at a Starbucks and then go with the skinny peppermint mocha). Think you invented all of it if you want.

Be an idealist (with deodorant) for as long as you can because your I-can-make-a-difference attitude will be squeezed out of you quicker than a seventh grader can speed dial her BFF with a rotary phone in 1987.

Change the world before you realize you might not be able to and by all means, hug your friends.

Did you ever think you “invented” anything? Did you ever think you could change the world? Why do we stop feeling positive and idealistic about the world? What changes, do you think?

Who Are You Trying to Be?

It’s like the worst ice breaker ever.

You are in some ridiculous work-related team-building session, or at a church women’s retreat, or in ANY situation where you are supposed to quickly and efficiently get to know someone.

“What is your most embarrassing moment, Sarah?”

Oh, you know. In 7^th grade someone pulled the chair out from under me the 2^nd day of Home Ec class. I was horrified, but I ended up becoming friends with that same girl later on so it really didn’t matter.

This is my normal, practiced, boring response to the MEM question until now.

Up until the other day when I remembered something far back into my adolescence that makes me completely cringe to think of it. It seriously might be the stupidest thing I really ever did. It eclipses, to many degrees, the 7^th grade tailbone-to-the-linoleum incident.

A few weeks ago my five-year-old, in asking about my recent Sunday spent away at Blog Sugar and in wondering about my upcoming trip to Pennsylvania also asked me what a Christian Women’s Blogging Conference is.

“Are you a Christian Woman Blogger, Mama?”

Yes, sweetheart. I am. How kind of you to notice.

“Hey Mom. Maybe you should go as a ‘blogger’ on Halloween.”

At first I laughed. Because that would be awesome. I’d carry my laptop, wear my workout clothes and put headphones in my ears as we trick-or-treated at dusk.

GASP. I already have. On accident. But not as a blogger. It took Naomi’s suggestion to help me reach back into my memory, into high school where no one ever should have to return.

I went as a literary character to a high school Halloween party.

Oh yes I did. I win the Nerd Award of the day.

In ninth grade I was a J.D. Sallinger nut. I read The Catcher in the Rye 4 times during that year. I thought I was cool because the protagonist, Holden Caufield said “damn” and things like that and I thought I was “getting away” with something each time I read it.

So, in 10^th grade I decided to go as Holden Caufield to a Halloween party. Except no one but I knew who I was trying to emulate. I wore a tweed-ish coat, silly librarian-looking glasses, penny loafers and carried a copy of Catcher peeking out of my pocket.

I mingled with Cheerleaders and Freddy Kruegers, with a few vampires and a group dressed as hippies from the 1960s. And then there was me. A writing wanna-be who wasn’t distinct enough in her costume to communicate.

Um, Sarah. Are you dressed up at all?

Who are you?

Who’s that?

I thought I could emulate the character by trying to dress the part. But my costume didn’t go far enough, and apparently didn’t reach far enough into pop culture to make a difference.

More than 20 years later I actually am a writer and as an introvert my tendency is to fade into the emotional background of life. But when it comes to other things, I want to be very clear about Who I am trying to emulate.

I’d like to be distinctly Christ-like in my love,

to be like Him in my grace-giving.

I’d like to emulate Jesus in my words and actions,

and to mimic Him in courage.

I don’t want the rest of my life to be a series of embarrassing moments of who-are-you-trying-to-be-like-Sarah? I’d like it to be more clear than a worn paperback out of my jeans pocket and a tweed jacket. I’d like it to be WHO I am.

What is your most embarrassing moment? Who have you tried to emulate in your life?