When kids make you laugh so hard, your sides hurt, it might be the middle school years. It’s a time when kids have a somewhat grown-up appearance, but they still have that impishness that makes me grin just thinking about it.
I still laugh when I think of football car pools. No one wanted the return trip home, but I did. The skinny boys of fall were muddy, sweaty and laughing. In our car pool, we had twins who excelled in rapid-fire delivery of Internet jokes that made me laugh so hard, I’d cry.
This hearty half dozen players had also mastered and memorized some “Jeopardy” skits from “Saturday Night Live” starring Will Farrell as the Alex Trebek and Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery.
It was like watching it live.
Now, we also did have practical jokes in school, but these kids did nothing like the tricks I recalled at St. George Elementary School. And many of those kids had grown up to be teachers, principals, lawyers, judges and doctors.
Middle schoolers will make you laugh, make mistakes, make you cry and give you memories. The best advice I ever received about dealing with any of the bad times was from a teacher. “Kids will have rules to follow the rest of their lives. If they break a few now, they’ll learn to stop. We all need to give them a break.
Here’s to middle school mayhem.