Time Grabs You by the Wrist

The Unexpected Sentimentality of 8th Grade Graduation

On the velveteen seats of a charter bus in early days of summer in 1998, me and 25 of my parochial schoolmates shared a sacred experience on the rocky roads of I-95. We were driving to a Lutheran overnight camp, a rite of passage for hormonal 14-year-olds who were as well-versed in the Small Catechism as they were in Bone Thugs and Leonardo DiCaprio. Just four months prior, Green Day had released their fifth studio album, “Nimrod,” which featured the now-eponymous radio single “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” If I hadn’t majored in communications in college, I could have majored in this song because it played no less than 2,500 times on that bus ride to North Carolina. “Good Riddance” is the “Hotel California” of the 90s – a great song subsequently beaten to a bloody pulp by prom DJs for the last 25 years. And, like “Hotel California,” it is easy to shove it into a box of corny cliches. But, as I look back on that formative year, it has become Exhibit A in my coming of age. 

Next week, my first-born child will be graduating from 8^th grade. Unlike the pomp and circumstance of prior pivot points – entrance to preschool, kindergarten, and middle school – this one is having a much headier effect. I’ve spent weeks analyzing the surprising sentimentality of 8^th grade graduation. After all, as many a curmudgeon have pointed out, what does this milestone even mean? The completion of a legally mandated education standard? An 8^th grade education has zero bearing on the capitalist machine. With child labor being criminalized – thanks a lot, Obama – why are we celebrating these pubescent freeloaders anyway?!

There is certainly room to judge the over-the-top peacockery of America’s wealthiest families who spend a fortune on the most trivial non-moments. So, let me level-set here. This is not about wealth or privilege or any of the extremely warranted cultural criticisms rising from our shrinking middle class. This is about the inherent significance of 8^th grade graduation and why time traveling to 1998 and relistening to one of Green Day’s most popular songs has helped me make sense of my life on the edge of 40. 

Back to those fuzzy charter bus seats. They smelled like corn chips and Cool Water cologne, embracing our little adolescent bodies like ancient ancestors accompanying us into the Great Unknown. Someone had a portable speaker attached to a boom box with “Good Riddance” on repeat.

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

So make the best of this test and don’t ask why

It’s not a question but a lesson learned in time

At the time, I was less concerned with the existential meaning of Billie Joe Armstrong’s lyrics and more concerned with how hot and interesting the adults in the music video looked as they slogged through the minutia of their suburban lives. “One day I’m going to be like that,” I thought to myself as I looked out of the bus window, wearing a bucket hat I had purchased at a questionable rest stop in Georgia. “One day I’m going to be sexy and tortured,” I muttered as our science teacher used a squeegee to remove a three-inch-thick layer of love bug guts from the charter bus grill before continuing on to the Christian camp of my dreams. 

Eighth grade marks a time in a girl’s life where she secretly develops feelings for young men who would make her parents want to set themselves on fire – like carnies who loosely look like the lead singer for The Offspring and Christian camp counselors named Shawn who know three guitar chords from a Dave Matthews song and preach about Agape love while looking a little too deeply into the eyes of the most precocious female campers. Although I was sure at the time that Shawn and I were going to get married and have a bunch of Dave Matthews singin’ babies in the Blue Ridge mountains like modern day Von Trapps, I instead spent three days spelunking and white water rafting with the rest of my self-loathing peers and then listened to Green Day for another 2,500 times on our way back to Florida where I graduated from 8^th grade on May 22, 1998. 

I remember that day like it was yesterday. That’s what makes my reaction to my daughter’s milestone so significant. The recollection is visceral. I remember trying on my extra-large graduation cap (“We called her rock head when she was born, you know,” was my mom’s always helpful color commentary). I remember buying my dress from the Delia’s catalog and selecting the pewter metallic Steve Madden platform slides. I remember clasping my cross necklace while rapping along to “Hypnotize” by Biggie on my Sony boombox.

I make a lot of jokes about my little Lutheran school, but I wouldn’t change a thing about my experience. The graduation ceremony was rich with comedy – gaggles of church girls wobbling on plastic stripper heels like baby colts, the monotone sing-a-longs to synthy Christian cheese like Michael W. Smith, speakers sobbing their way through Bible verses at the podium, and the watery eyes of our parents scared to death of our secular high schools. After the “diploma” hand-offs, we wobbled our way to our formal dance in the gym. We danced to Boyz II Men, Mariah, Hanson, Sublime, Natalie Imbruglia, Nirvana, Paul Cole, and, of course, Green Day for the 5,001^st time. 

I remember writing in my diary that when I got to high school, everything was going to change and I was finally going to be woman I wanted to be.

Of course, 25 years later I’m still trying to become that woman, but the fire in my belly is the same one that was sparked that night. And the same girls with whom I shared lip gloss, claw clips, body spray, and my deepest, darkest secrets are the same women whose wedding veils I’ve adjusted, whose baby announcements I’ve taped to my fridge, and who are texting me snapshots of our yearbook notes as I type this newsletter. 

I didn’t cry at my 8th grade graduation. I didn’t have the gift of retrospect and I didn’t understand the emotional wear and tear that the passage of time would ultimately inflict on my heart. But that’s the beauty of nostalgia, of mining the past for today’s truths. 

Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go

Listening to that song once again, it has this immediate resonance with my current situation. During big moments like this one – my baby girl is going to high school! – parents hyperventilate over readiness. Are they ready? Am I ready? Somehow the answer is 100% yes and 100% no. You’re never really ready, but you do it anyway. In the moment, you don’t think you can possibly take the next scary step, yet time grabs you by the wrist and directs you there anyway. 

My daughter was selected to give a “looking back” speech at next week’s promotion ceremony. As she was writing it, we talked about what the through-line was going to be – what is the recurring truth that has carried her from preschool to present day? She immediately zeroed in on the first steps. First steps into kindergarten. First steps into middle school. First steps into high school this fall. She was nervous, excited, and overwhelmed each and every time, but somehow the first steps always happened. And somewhere behind her is the blurry, myopic figure of her mommy, riding the coattails of her brave first steps, just like the first time her chubby little baby legs darted across our apartment floors. I cheered and clapped for her then, and I’ll cheer and clap for her again, and again, and again. 

Happy 8^th grade graduation, my sweet girl. I hope you had the time of your life. 

Two drinks jump out at me as I think back on my go-to bevvies from the late 90s / early aughts. 

First off, shout out to Fresca, the original sugar-free grapefruit soda that was launched in the 60s and was a staple in our house in the 90s and early 2000s. Apparently it’s gone through multiple rebrands and is currently being marketed as a “sparkling soda water.” As an elder of my generation, I denounce these rebrands and instead dig my heels into Fresca conservatism. Give me the OG or give me death. Had my life gone down another path and Coca-Cola not jumped on the soda water bandwagon, I can see myself a buxom socialite, chugging Frescas in the backyard of a Palm Spring patio home, puffing Virginia Slims. Is there tequila in her Fresca? We’ll never know!

Second, I am going to give a nod to another Coca-Cola product, one that only survived for nine years, but they were the most important nine years of my childhood. Fruitopia was launched in 1994 and became my vending machine sweetheart. I enjoyed pairing orange Fruitopia with a frosted strawberry Pop-Tart. Incidentally, that was exactly what I was eating when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center in 2001. Coca-Cola ended up axing it in 2003. While 9/11 was never cited as the direct reason Fruitopia went under, I can say for certain that I never had a taste for it after that day. 

Let’s play a word association game with the top 10 grossing films of 1998. I’m going to paste the list here and say the first thing that comes to mind. You can do it, too! Do you have a dead bedroom or a hostile dinner table? Just print the list and get the conversation going. 

1. Armageddon – Pervy animal crackers 

2. Saving Private Ryan – TOO SAD TO TALK ABOUT

3. Godzilla – Puff Daddy barely escaping death by Tribeca bus

4. There's Something About Mary – Cameron Diaz looks better with spunk in her hair than 90% of us without spunk in our hair

5. A Bug's Life – Pretty good joke about a poo poo platter

6. Deep Impact – The cerebral rebuttal to Armageddon. Deep Impact = Bug’s Life, Armageddon = Antz

7. Mulan – Christina Aguilera slaying the closing credits

8. Dr. Dolittle – Best thing about it was Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”

9. Shakespeare in Love – Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare turned me into a British Lit superstar

10. Lethal Weapon 4 – I’m getting too old for this shit

The #1 song on the Billboard charts the week leading into my 8^th grade graduation was Next’s “Too Close.” I’m pretty positive this was played at our Lutheran school dance. It was definitely played at every homecoming and prom dance through high school graduation. Problem is no one bothered listening to the lyrics. 

Imagine a line of middle-aged chaperones wearing chinos, nibbling on cheese cubes, doing the white suburban loafer shuffle while a crowd of literal children in their care dance to a song about male arousal. That’s what the entire song is about. Don’t believe me? Revisit the song.

If you were a chino-clad, cheese-eating chaperone at a school dance between 1998 – 2002, then this perversion happened on your watch. 

Way to go.