Well They Say It's Kinda Fright'nin' How This Younger Generation Swings

After next Monday, my baby will officially be an eighth grader. It made me remember my last year in junior high and I was suddenly very, very afraid.

When I was in eighth grade, we had a big graduation and field trip, since most of us would all be going to different high schools in the Chicago area. Every year the eighth grade class went to Milwaukee to tour the breweries, because how else are you going to prepare a bunch of working class Irish Catholics from the South suburbs to deal with a life of factory work and too many children? Of course, you teach them the beauty of beer before they even get to high school. This is the story of how I fucked-up my graduation trip for me and some of my friends. It is only one, among hundreds of annoying things I did that year.

There was a time when you thought you were the funniest thirteen year old on the planet, (as usual, when I say you, I really mean me) and when you possess that kind of humor, you really have to make sure that everyone around you knows it. A good way to ensure that, is to wait until you are bored in your science class and fill your syringe with water. The minute your teacher has her back to the class, you squirt your syringe full of water at one of your friends. They might yelp or say, "What the...?", but they are thirteen and smart and they cover it up, by pretending to cough when the teacher turns around.

Some more of your friends, find this whole bit particularly amusing, and fill their own syringes with water. You are all careful not to get caught, until you stupidly aim your loaded syringe at Peter Amandio, who can sometimes be fun, but is usually a big, gigantic kiss-ass. He yelps loudly and doesn't even pretend to cover it up. In fact, he raises his traitor paw in the air and tells on you.

Your teacher, who is normally so busy opening bottles on her freakish hook nose, to even take the time to figure out what a sense of humor is, begins her lecture. You are counting the freckles on your forearm, while your teacher drones on and on about safety and responsibility and maturity and somewhere in there you wonder why you can't make fart noises under your armpit anymore, ever since you grew breasts and how unfair life can be for women sometimes. Then you actually pay attention when she doles out your punishment. You and your friends will be allowed to attend the field trip, you will just be forced to write the ISCS science rules about 4,984 times during said trip.

You and your friends stress out through all of Milwaukee's finest beer factories about whether your hand will fall off before it's all over. Instead of learning any kind of lesson from your punishment, you spend the rest of the school year plotting ways to get back at Peter Amandio.