Approaching 40: Don’t you forget about me

Seventh grade was a new world for me. New school, new friends, and there was also the fact that you didn’t remain in the same classroom all day, but instead you moved from class to class over the course of the day. Six periods, with a break in the morning and a break at lunch time. The school I attended, Porter Junior High, was a little closer to my house than my elementary school so that was convenient. But there was one added inconvenience that lingered throughout seventh grade: puberty.

Seventh grade, for me, spanned 1984-95, and in early 1985, The Breakfast Club was out in theaters and extremely popular, at least among my friends. The closing song from the movie became my anthem for seventh grade: Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me.” There was a time when hearing that song would transport me back to those dark, rainy, days when my blood was filled with all kinds of hormones. I say “dark and rainy” because I can’t remember a sunny day in seventh grade. The chemicals coursing through my veins made me moody and the sunshine seemed to evaporate away.

I had a rough time in seventh grade. School, which was so easy for me in sixth grade, became much more difficult for me in seventh. I struggled particularly in math, for no other reason than I simply didn’t care, didn’t pay attention. I also found it difficult to do my homework, and that too affected my grades. But despite all that, I survived, I made it through and there was a light at the end of that dark, dark tunnel Indeed, I can distinctly remember laying in bed at night, dreading going to school the next morning. I felt like I was at the bottom of some deep well from which I could never escape. But I did.

Looking back on it, it’s painfully amusing. But it was all deadly serious back then. And The Breakfast Club was the perfect movie to reflect that tween-angst that I was experiencing.

I shiver just watching this video.