blog: An Endless Yard Sale
Who you were in middle school is who you are today.
Date posted: 2013-12-11
👋 HEY!: This article was originally written on December 11, 2013, and is being reproduced here from the original Medium post. I was the original creator of this.
One of my favorite songs of all time is “Everything Must Go” by The Weakerthans. It’s an amazing poetry in verse about the sudden realization that, over the years, you’ve accumulated hundreds of little trinkets and reminders of past defeats and insecurities. A broken compass, a pocket watch, some plastic daffodils — meaningful, precious moments that cling to your clothes like dry burrs. That scar from your first job, the hat you got in first grade, the rancid hotdog you accidentally choked on at a Phillies game; more than items, these are experiences that come to define us.
We run our hearts like rickety sheds, tossing memories and objects behind closed doors so we can at get them out of the way — but there comes a time when you’re wading up to your knees in broken beach chairs and trashbags of old underwear, and it all must go. There’s a hesitation there, when you first realize that if you ever want to fill that shed up with more crap, you’re going to have to sort through every used needle you ever threw away. This is what John Samson, lead singer of The Weakerthans, wrote about in “Everything Must Go” — dealing with our old stuff feels exactly like, as he says, “a laugh too loud or too long.”
Lately, I’ve felt an uncomfortable cold between the adult I feel I should be and the attention-hungry child I was in middle school. For some reason, I still desperately flail around in a continuous attempt to impress people who don’t pay attention to me — just like I did when I was an awkward, gangly weiner in middle school. A lot of people feel that middle school, at least for Western kids, is one of our most formative times. Our unfulfilled dreams, belly fat and knobby knees collect during that time like a cardboard box of unsharpened pencils and ticket stubs that seems to travel with you every time you move. Always there, only to be seen every other year when you wonder, “man, what’s even in this box?”
When I was in my early 20s, one of my favorite things to do was to tell myself that I was finally a mature being that had finally transcended past all of that crap I keep on file from my more vulnerable years. Of course, as it’s say, you must be really young to know so much. I learned at 25 years old through a series of heartbreaks and flesh-wounds that I was no older than I ever was — I’ll still do anything for approval, I still get irrationally excited about juice boxes and I am still just as fearful of rejection. All that has changed is that the 13-year-old me learned quickly how common situations turn out and how best to react to them.
Hell, I still get upset when someone removes me from their Facebook friends list. I’m 26 years old. Who cares, right? Well, apparently my inner 13-year-old does.
Maybe it’s time to move forward and sell all of the things I have sitting around, but then again, who would ever be interested in buying a Krang action figure with only half of its original paint?
Anyway, gotta go. I’m late for recess.