1993-94 – 7th grade ended early for me. My dad pulled us out of school in early June to take us to Europe for three weeks. My friend Carlyn was nice enough to get people to sign my yearbook for me, so I wouldn’t be left with nothing. However, I was not the most popular of young ladies so while I did get signatures, most of them were “have a great summer.”
My crush signed “I hope your (sic) having fun in Europe. Love, Tavis.”
Immediately beneath with an arrow pointing to his signature – “WHOA Reva!” This trend of subtlety would continue forever, as I will reveal. Other 7th grade gems:
“I’m the first person to sign your crack! Chris L”
“Reva, Chris is a pervert. I think he means it too. Next time you go to Europe bring me back a souvenir. Tony.”
And finally, we have the condescending, “Reva, have a good summer. Don’t get hung over another guy like you did with T.T.” WHO ASKED YOU, BITCH? As if I was the only 12/13-yr old to ever have an intense crush. And unfortunately for the 87 boys who followed T.T., I did not heed her advice.
1994-95- 8th grade. Slightly better. More friends but more boy crazy.
“Reva, you’ve been through lost (sic) – of people this year.”
“You’re unforgettable, seriously.” (From my main crush who did NOT mean it the way I wanted him too, trust me)
“Have a great summer. Yes your crushes have been severe, and I’ve told you to shut up about a million times. But it has been worth it. P.S. You still owe me 3 packages of Live Savers.”
“Hi Revers! Please reduce your hormone overdrive, and I think I have 1 word for this year: Keanu.” (Speed was out on VHS and we watched it at sleepovers all the time, even though I wasn’t allowed to watch rated R movies at the time, I suspect my mother will forgive me).
How could you NOT swoon over this?
1995-96: 9th grade and back to square suckage. Back in MY day, 9th graders ruled the Junior High (which is now 6-8th grades and our high school is a normal four years). However, ruling the school meant nothing in my instance. I was in band at the high school and I had to take attendance every day. I got conned into it when the teacher asked us to raise our hand if we liked talking on the phone, because from then on I had to call the junior high with the list of those absence. You can only imagine how awful that was for my already non-existent popularity and all the favors people wanted.
As I am rereading these, one really stuck out. One of those popular girls that normally didn’t give me the time of day wrote something very sweet. We had a couple of classes together and she could sense that I was struggling.
“Reva, Hola Chica! Well, you finally got your braces off and you have a beautiful smile! I will miss you next year. I hope you have more self-confidence and am very glad I got to know you this year!”
The rest is more of the usual: Band sucked, hope your summer was cool, I’ll never forget your love obsession with xyzabc.
So, I will let this classic clip basically sum up my freshman year:
And then, things changed. I went to Europe. I met amazing people who didn’t know I wasn’t popular and had been a band geek. I realized I had a solid group and we kind of stayed together from 7th grade on, but it’s not necessarily something you realize until like, you’re all sitting together at lunch and laughing your asses off and you look around and think, “these are my people, no matter what.” And then nothing else matters (ironically this was the year my obsession with Metallica happened because I had a crush on three different guys who were obsessed with them. Hey, I didn’t say the unreasonable crushes stopped!).
A Series of Very Bad Decisions 