I used to be cool.

That title is a lie.  I was never necessarily "cool" at any time in my life, but there were many a time when I thought I was doing something cool.  Mostly in Middle School.  I thought I was pretty awesome back then. 

So sometime around 7th grade I made friends with a bunch of pretty cool girls.  We were skinny jocks that ate twice our weight, didn't care much about guys, and kind of had a sense of style.  ("In-style" at that time was wearing Abercrombie or Hollister.)

But we wore t-shirts and soccer shorts anytime outside of school.  I still do that...

Also, about half us played lacrosse together, so we often wore the same exact shirts.

Ahh the memories.  Anyway, we all sat at the same lunch table and since we had a full hour for lunch/recess (yes, we still had recess) we came up with a lot of stupid ways to entertain ourselves.  One of these activities was stealing plastic spoons from the cafeteria.  We called ourselves "The Spoon Mafia."  So much cool.  Basically, when we'd go through the lunch line, we'd grab as many plastic spoons as we could without getting caught.  At first we'd come back with about 5 spoons stuffed in our hoodies, but the numbers continued to increase as we got more courageous.  I think the record was around 20 spoons.  Actually, I have no idea how many, but it got pretty ridiculous.  We would keep a collection of all the spoons that we stole, and laugh because of our stealthy skills.

Our secret stash.

Yeah, I stole all these photos from facebook.

We also threw away a lot of lunch trays.  Apparently it was too much work to walk to the other side of the cafeteria to return our trays.  And after throwing away our trays into the trash cans, we'd steal those too, and roll them into the bathroom stalls.  For some reason it was really fun to watch the lunch ladies search for the trash cans.  Once at the end of lunch we rolled the trash can down the halls with the rush of students.  It got pretty far.  Jeez, we thought we were hilarious.

Once winter came, we spent most of our recess time in the cafeteria or on the stage.  On the sides of the stage there were ramps for wheelchair access, but we used them for other purposes.  We made a very exclusive group called the "Scooter Club" where we used the orchestra music stands as scooter-like devices to slide down the ramp.  Why we thought this was fun, I don't know.  Mostly we just thought we were funny.  Middle schoolers are typically thought of awkward, and a bunch of confused and depressed kids, but I'm pretty sure we all had way too much self-confidence.  Which is why we thought we were so cool.

Our friendship was greatly defined by our lunch time escapades, but the other half would be our birthday sleepovers.  We had a fairly large group of friends, so there were a lot of birthday parties.  And our birthday parties were always the same.  We'd have a sleepover in the birthday girl's basement, eat lots of food, give candy and gift cards as presents, and have an ice cream birthday cake.

Except this is the one time it wasn't an ice cream cake.

Then we'd be loud and obnoxious for the rest of the night.  Probably watch a movie that I wasn't allowed to watch, and then maybe pull some pranks on those who fell asleep first.  Sometimes we'd go and harass the neighbors by dressing up in costumes and go trick or treating in the middle of August.  Another time we went Christmas caroling.  But see, it was hilarious because it wasn't Christmas!  And I'm pretty sure we also pretended it was New Year's Eve and counted down from 10 at people's doors.  Except I'm not positive if that one actually happened. 

Then we graduated middle school.  They told us to dress up for the last day when we got our little diplomas.  Well, I wasn't about to look nice for a stupid assembly.

So I wore this pioneer dress.  It was only five sizes too small.

Once we hit high school, our little group wasn't as tight knit as it once was, but that's just how things go.  It was fun while it lasted, and most of us stayed fairly close.

But we still went to Homecoming together our freshman year.  Look, we can look presentable!

So did you know that I was on the curling team in high school?  We were undefeated.  We also never played a single game, but that's a minor detail.  We posted fliers all over the school for an informational meeting to join the curling team.  Except the date had already passed.  We also had awesome t-shirts that said "Sweep Away the Competition" on the backs.  We fooled a lot of people even though we had no idea how to curl.  I admit, I still think that was pretty funny.  Some people are so gullible.

Like I already mentioned, I was never exactly popular.  I guess a decent amount of people knew of me, but I'm pretty sure it was because I'm an Asian Mormon.  Neither are very common in Ohio.  Anyway, I never hosted any parties, because I was unsure of the turnout.  That is, until my 17th birthday when I had a dance party in my basement.  This was just the time before hipsters became an actual thing, so we were basically a bunch of pre-hipsters.  We'd dress up in crazy clothing and dance strangely.  It may look like I was high, but I wasn't being sexually inappropriate! So yeah, I had a dance party and it was awesome.  Mainly because people showed up, and I didn't look like a loser. 

All the pictures were blurry because it was so humid and sweaty. 

Look at all the shoes!  I'm popular!

So that one night I got a taste of what it would be like to be popular.  But not really, because you don't need to know the person who's hosting the dance party.  You just show up.

And that's all I remember from my middle/high school times.  It's surprising how much I've already forgotten.  Probably because the rest of my memories involved sitting in a classroom surrounded by teenagers.  I still can't believe I want to be a teacher.