Choga

Does anyone else remember "choga," or was that just a Webb Middle School thing? At Webb, a choga was when someone would grab you by the face and shove their thumb-knuckle under and behind your chin. I am pretty sure it really hurt. I fortunately never received a choga. Middle School was evil. I remember there was a girl who smelled like barbecue and everyone called her "Bacon Bits." We also had a girl who looked like an old woman, and everyone called her Mrs. Beasley. There was another girl who had a skin disease that made her all flakey. I don't remember what she got called, but I'm sure it wasn't nice. One time, me and Kathy Harland won the talent show by doing a dance to the Cotton-Eyed Joe. We were HUGE dorks. I think we each got 10 dollars. We also started a business...we would paint customized shoe-laces for people with their names and little hearts or flowers or whatever they wanted. DORK-O-RAMA, but the laces were quite popular at the time. Then one day, Kathy did something that really got on my nerves, so I hauled off and hit her on the leg. I don't remember what it was that she did. We weren't friends after that. I remember once in middle school when Jodi Knable got carried away with flip-flops during a pep rally, and flip-flopped herself right into the gym wall. CRASH! There was also this one teacher who weighted about 350 pounds, but she could do the splits, and she would do it upon request like a freak show. I remember once when Whitney and I were office aides, and this really tough girl named Yolanda Montelongo made us get her out of class by pretending she needed to go to the nurse or something. She ended up getting caught skipping, and we had to go to the vice-principal's office (Mr. Wildermuth) and we told him we were afraid she would beat us up if we didn't get her out of class. It was really uncool to be smart, so I used to call out 85's in math class even though I usually made 100's. I vowed if I was ever a teacher, I wouldn't make kids call out their grades in front of the whole class. If you called out 100, everyone would groan and sneer at you. I hated middle school. In 7th grade, I had a math teacher named Mr. Mezzles (pronounced Measles) who gave me my one and only detention for talking. I hated PE the most. We had to folk-dance with the boy's PE class. I am glad I never have to go to middle school again.