The Tale of the Curling Iron

One of the events that stands out the most from my middle school years involves a curling iron. Random, I know, but it is true, and it led to some crazy drama, which middle school girls can do best.

There was a swimming pool in the middle of our middle school. We often would swim during our gym hour, and being a seventh grade girl, I felt the need to try to look presentable after swimming. So I brought my curling iron. I’m not sure how my hair got dry enough to curl, but I know I had my curling iron. It might have been just for my bangs. They were pretty impressive. Here is a picture to prove it (although I wish I could have found my school picture, it shows the “awesomeness” of my style much better):

Anyways, true to my typical blond nature, I left the curling iron in the dressing room after swimming. I remembered it later, but the curling iron had already disappeared. I was quite devastated, and there was probably a dramatic fit thrown. I don’t remember all of the details. I kept checking the lost and found, but it never showed up. Desperate to maintain my amazing bangs, I ended up buying a new curling iron. 

The next week when we went swimming for gym class, I saw one of my classmates using my curling iron. Horrified, I exclaimed, “That’s my curling iron! I want it back!” I eventually wrangled the curling iron back into my possession, and thus started an epic battle for a curling iron that was nearing the end of its usefulness.  The girl who took my curling iron even threatened to take me to student court (a peer mentoring and conflict resolution group composed of ninth graders in our middle school), among other bullying tactics from various members of her “posse”.

My friends and I immediately started to plan our defense tactics and made grandiose plans; however, nothing ever materialized. When the girl her friends realized that I wasn’t going to back down, everything fizzled out and I didn’t hear another word about it. It was kind of disappointing after all of our plotting. The most interesting plot twist was the fact that the main instigator and I became good friends in high school. Oh the dramas of middle school.

Chicken Pox

Up until the fifth grade, I had only missed one day of school. I prided myself on that fact, and the fact that I had earned four perfect attendance trophies. I was a pretty healthy kid, but even on the days I felt terrible, I still put on a brave face and drug myself to school. So you can understand my dismay and grief when I started noticing the first signs of chicken pox right before Christmas.

 I had a Christmas concert right after those first signs, and I threw a tizzy fit until my mom allowed me to go. This angered my grandma, who accused my mother of irresponsible parenting because I was contagious and was going to kill all of the babies in attendance. I do not recall any babies dying that winter. However, my mom did make me stay home from the ward Christmas Party, which made me absolutely furious, even though by that point I clearly had the chicken pox. I felt bad because it was my last year to participate, but I did survive.

At first I was mostly upset that my perfect attendance record was shattered, but then I realized that it was kind of nice to just hang out at home, especially since I didn’t feel that terrible, other than the relentless itching. I think I went back to school the day before Christmas break, which really didn’t make sense, but my five days were up, and being the overachiever I am, I wanted to get back in the grove of things as soon as possible (despite the fact that very little school work is every completed the day before Christmas break).

After this experience, I was much more relaxed about missing school. At least when I was sick; I still wanted those perfect attendance prizes after all.

Why?

I'm creating this blog mostly for me. I love to write, and I want to preserve my memories, but I didn't want to fill my regular blog with the past. My regular blog will be my first priority, but hopefully I can fill this blog with lots of memories as well.