An assault on my experience as a middle schooler
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
Whether it was my bleached tips or back-to-school Etnies, I’ll never know, but by mid-September of Grade 9, I had my first girlfriend. Her name was Sarah, and we were badminton partners, so I knew that it was meant to be.
The first few weeks were idyllic. We spent lunch breaks holding hands at the back of the soccer field, and walking to McDonalds to pool our change on value menu burgers. But just as I thought life was smiling down on my middle-school existence, something earth-shattering happened. My mother got a job in my school’s library.
My mother wasn’t yet aware of my “relationship status,” as it were. Dating was new for me and, for whatever reason, my skittish Grade 9 logic commanded that I take this new aspect of me to the grave — as far as my mother was concerned anyway.
So, Sarah and I quickly adjusted. We played it low-key around the staff who I knew my mother spoke with. Above all we avoided the library, only ever venturing there solo — or if absolutely necessary. Books do have return dates after all.
Then, in October, my reality was rocked once again — this time, seismically.
My mother began dating my principal.
Mr. McHenry was new to the school. I remember being relieved when I learned during summer that we were getting a new principal because I didn’t get along with the last one. He was traditionally traditional, and being that this was a Christian school, the principal’s office usually meant scripture reading and some degree of moral shaming.
So, when I met Mr. McHenry during the first few days of school, I was relieved to see he was young and cool, played basketball with students at lunch and, well, was strangely ripped for a school principal, which I didn’t give much initial thought to.
In hindsight, I know that someone else did.
To be fair, my mother’s previous boyfriend, dependable and sweet in his own way, smelled of diesel, and only ever talked truck repairs and paving at the dinner table. I can assume for my single mother, living in a small town in the interior of B.C., that Mr. McHenry must have seemed like a sculpted gift of brain and brawn, sent by the Lord himself.
But did I give a shit?
No!
It was her who was breaking an unspoken rule. Surely some ancient Protestant commandment carved in stone forbade these adults from making such irresponsible choices. Go ahead, date the rancher from church, or that short dude who owns the Tim Hortons in town. But… my principal? She may as well have sent me to school with a sign on my back that read: “My mom’s banging Mr. McHenry, please humiliate me.”
Their relationship was an assault on my experience as a middle schooler. Once the boys of Kings Christian found out, it was like blood in the water.
Then, Blair started coming over for dinner.
“Please, Paul, call me Blair,” Mr. McHenry told me. At the table in my home, sitting across from a man I should only have seen during daytime hours (wearing our school’s colors, no less!), it sounded more like a devious, insidious request to infiltrate all aspects of my life. I stabbed a piece of broccoli and scraped metal across ceramic. “Okay, Blair,” I said, my darkened eyes locked on his.
The only positive I could think of was having some sort of impunity at school. Maybe I could leverage Blair into a get-out-of-jail-free card. But when I eventually tested that logic and received no suspension for spiking my English teacher’s coffee with cologne (perfectly reasonable attention-seeking behavior given the circumstances of my life at the time), it only aggravated my classmates’ jokes — annulling any worthwhile exoneration.
I literally couldn’t win. That’s when I took a different course of action.
I suddenly began brazenly flaunting my relationship with Sarah throughout the school, no longer worried about the discomfort which caused me to guard it in the first place. I weaponized our PDA as a last-resort “fuck you” to my mother.
This strategy makes zero logical sense. Yes. But Grade nine me didn’t operate within a logical framework. Emotional? Sure. Vindictive? Definitely. But logical? No. This was about revenge. And sadly, in hindsight, Sarah became collateral.
We started hanging out in the stairwell by the library, where we would awkwardly hold each other during lunch. I chose this location intentionally, knowing my mom’s route to the staff room. I would stare her down defiantly, Sarah wrapped in my arms, only for my mother to play it off with a smile, and a level headed comment like: “Aww, aren’t you two so cute.” But I knew the message I was being sent; and I had a message of my own to send back. Push us any further, and Sarah and I will be known as the make-out couple of Kings Christian.
The one flaw with this threat was, of course, my lack of experience. I hadn’t broken the “first-kiss” seal, and even my angsty middle school vindictiveness toward my mother was no match for my severe lack of game. I tried to keep the bluff going, but Sarah inevitably dumped me a few weeks later, and started playing badminton with a kid named Herb instead.
Blair left town at the end of the school year, and we never saw him again. I like to think that I had a gut feeling all along that he was bad news, that I had protected my mother from a bad dude. But really, I was just guarding an ancient truth: Never ever date your child’s principal.
