When I was your age...

Here we are in late May, approaching Memorial Day, which means only a few more weeks remain in the current school term. When Spring finally decided to stick around for good--bringing longer hours of daylight, warmer temperatures (and therefore increased opportunities to romp outside), and soccer practices (aka "structured frolicking")--it became a challenge to stay focused on schoolwork, and dedicated to finishing out the 4th quarter in strong fashion. (Yeah, that's probably because it's only ME who cares about these things...but I'll keep cracking the whip, have no fear!)

Even though Derek has almost completely managed his own homework load independently in 6th grade, it's an ingrained habit for me to query him about each night's tasks. But I've got to admit, that's one thing I've truly adored about Middle School: the emphasis on kids taking responsibility for their academic life. No more monitoring the Math sheet before he turns it in to check for errors, no more proofreading paragraphs to edit for spelling and grammar, no more initialing the bottom of the Assignment Book to prove parental vigilance. Now don't get me wrong--all of these things are services freely offered by the in-house Homework Assistant should they be requested or required. (You don't even have to use the formal title, you can just call her "Mom"...um, unless it's "Dad"...whatever, you get my point...) But for the most part, Derek has taken care of business on his own. So when he approached me last night and announced that he needed to interview me for his Reading task, I was intrigued. He settled down on my bed with his paper and pencil and began, "Describe popular fashions when you were in Middle School." Wait, I'm sorry, what? And we would be discussing this....WHY, exactly? "Cultural growth and changes," he elaborated. Oh yes...naturally.

Aaaanyway, sweetie, I'm so glad you asked! At this point there was really no other choice but to break out the old photo albums and illustrate dramatically for him the beloved fashions of the 80s. (Let me be clear: under no circumstances did I EVER copy the early lacy/trampy Madonna look. But I might have been caught wearing legwarmers. However, since there appears to be no surviving photographic evidence, you can't prove a thing!) As I giggled, flipping through the nostalgic pages, he interrupted me, "Ahem, can we get back on track, here?" Oh, right. Where were we? Next item: "What represented cutting edge technology back then?" Ha! Let's start with what we didn't have: computers; video game systems (although good old Atari showed up sometime...ah, Frogger and Space Invaders...); cell phones; cable television; mp3 players. Hmm, what was available to make our lives easier and/or more entertaining? Oh, I know: Walkmans! (Carry a box with your music in it wherever you go! It's bulky and heavy and the cassette tape will eventually snarl or break, but it's the best thing going!) And cordless phones! (Chat with a friend, without being attached to the wall! Go ahead, wander into the other room, it's tons of fun!) And...VCRs! (Watch a movie in the privacy and comfort of your own house. Oops, missed something? Rewind...nope, fast forward, nope rewind again! Thank goodness my children will never know the torture of a world before DVDs...) Meanwhile, Derek dutifully took all this down...snickering softly into his worksheet as he wrote.

After that little jaunt down memory lane, he posed his next question: "How was school different then?" You mean besides having to go to the Library to look up information? And using a pen to write it down? After the obvious pre-Internet factor, I was actually puzzled by this one. From what I remember, school started too early in the morning for my taste, I traveled there by bus, I began in Homeroom, then had 7 periods in different classrooms with different teachers, and I tackled homework each night from a select number of my subjects. Hey, all of this sounds eerily similar to what my son experiences right now in 2012! So maybe the old adage applies here: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Only now, Derek's generation can track the trends and updates using a laptop...or his iPod...or breaking news reports on 24-hour CNN...and the rest of us Gen Xers had better sprint to keep up!