When I Was In Middle School

When I was in middle school, things were different - a lot different.

First of all, we didn’t call it middle school - it was called junior high. Most junior highs housed grades 6, 7 and 8 but some did 7, 8 and 9. Mine was the former.

Technology wasn’t a word that we used. 

We didn’t have cell phones - not even flip phones; they hadn’t been invented yet. All our phones had wires and most hung on the wall.

We didn’t have computers - personal computers hadn’t been invented yet and the computers that did exist were so expensive only a large city or business could afford one - yes, just one. Oh, and they were about the size of a car.

We didn’t have iPads, tablets, Youtube, Facebook, Snapchat, or Pokemon Go.

We didn’t have video games - no Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo. 

We didn’t have iPods, MP3s, or CDs.

Here’s what we did have - we had Legos and Erector Sets and Hot Wheels and board games, and our imaginations.

We had wood and tools and jack knives.  We whittled. (Do you even know what that word means?)

We had yo-yos, jax, squirt guns, bikes, sling shots, frisbees, slinkys, silly putty, jump ropes and balls of all sorts.

We played outside: hide ’n seek, red rover, mother may I, hop scotch, four square, marco polo, tag, football, baseball, basketball, kickball, badminton, volleyball, tetherball, croquet, keep away, pickle, kick the can, and stick ball.

In school, we had film strips, records and movies - real movies that came on big, heavy reels of film. And we had books. We had books for every class and books to read for fun.

We had comic books, chapter books, coffee-table books and reference books.

We had a huge set of books called encyclopedias in every classroom. Encyclopedias contained all the world’s most important knowledge. It was like someone printed out the internet (which had not been invented yet either).

Think about how much the world has changed since I was in junior high and think about the world you are growing up in now.  

How much is it going to change by the time your children are in middle school? Probably a lot and it probably won’t even be called middle school then.