Past 18-plus months have been rough on junior high

As I cruised slowly through the school zone at the junior high, my afternoon slowed even more as a young man appeared at the curb near the crosswalk.

I stopped and the student stepped into the street, facemask still over his nose and his cell phone inches from his eyes. To say the pace he set was a leisurely stroll would have been inaccurate because it was much slower than a stroll. If I hadn’t been carefully watching his body language I might have thought he was messing with me just to make me wait. He was looking at his phone and totally disengaged with the world.

That set me to thinking. I was stopped at a crosswalk and had lots of time. First I thought about how inconsiderate people never stop at crosswalks anymore.

Mostly I thought about how tough it is to be in junior high. I was terrible at it — or at least I thought I was at the time. I didn’t know what clique I belonged with so I sorta hung out with all of them, thereby never becoming a member of any of them. Add to that body hair growing in new places (and not growing as fast in others), girls and what music was cool and not cool to listen to and it’s no wonder I couldn’t wait to leave the school grounds and get on my paper route where at least I was earning money.

Junior high kids today have a real whammy with all the normal hormonal problems coupled with the fact that we have a pandemic complicating things even more.

I’m not a psychologist; even though I wouldn’t mind playing one on TV, but I pondered that probably the most crucial time to have social, in-person contact is in junior high. These kids are forming adult social skills and we just put them in a nearly year-long timeout. That can’t be good.

They want to see their friends more than anything else at this stage of life, even if I maybe didn’t quite fall into that mould myself. When things are said in class or in the hallway they’re not paying as much attention to the person speaking as they are to those around them. Watching reactions, learning to read faces and worried about what to think about what’s being said and how to respond.

As I thought about everything kids of this age have missed out on over the last 18-plus months, I think they may have suffered as much as anybody during this time of online classes, masks, social distancing and canceled school and community events.

The only folks that may have suffered more than junior high school students might be junior high school teachers and parents of junior high students.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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