Are We Not Seventh Graders?
Imagery that Alice catalogs about her very first day as a seventh grader indicates that the only current answer to the above query is, no, we are devo. To read her account of this all-important commencement of what she fully expects to be a major turning point in her life, the summer break between the end of sixth and the beginning of seventh grade is, unknowingly of course, a period of complete devolution:
“In seventh grade, you grow backward. In sixth, I kept a list of all the things I learned that showed I was growing up, and another of all the stupid, embarrassing things I did that proved I wasn’t. Most of the time they were about even. If I still kept a record of all I’ve done, my `backward' list would run right off the page. In a single day—the first day of seventh grade—I accidentally squirted a teacher at the drinking fountain, tripped on the stairs to the second floor, and sat on a doughnut in the cafeteria.”
The Myth of Middle School
Alice attends one of those weird school districts where sixth grade is actually the last year of elementary school. Apparently, middle school stretches from seventh grade to include ninth grade. Which raises the question of whether tenth grade is considered freshman year of high school or sophomore. All of which is beside the point because the imagery her is related to deconstructing the myths of the transition to middle school which has been passed down by a clearly unreliable source:
“Almost everything that Pamela told us about seventh grade, that her cousin in New Jersey told her, was wrong. So far, anyway. You don’t have to have a boyfriend or a leather skirt, either one. What you worry about, instead, is whether you can remember your coat locker and P.E. locker combinations both, whether you can get from one end of the building to the other before the bell, whether you’ll drop your tray in the cafeteria and everyone will clap, and whether, when you go in the restroom, there will be any latches on the stalls.”
Blue-Green Eyes
Seventh grade marks the introduction of Alice to her Language Arts class teacher, Miss Summers. So entrancing are the young woman’s irises that they are enough for Alice to get so lost in them that they serve as a temporary sanctuary from the memory that her nemesis Denise shares the same class. As it will eventually turn out, Alice’s infatuation with Miss Summers via those unusually hued peepers turns out to work as imagery that foreshadows one of the most momentous events of the entire series: Miss Summers becoming Alice’s stepmother.
The Bubbles Incident
One of the key events which occurs in this installment of Alice’s adventures is the “Bubbles” incident. The actual consequences of the incident are far too complex to explain, but that doesn’t really matter here because it all traces back to a much more concisely explained moment in time effectively conveyed trough memorable imagery:
“Last summer, on a sleepover at Elizabeth’s, we had taken pictures of each other in the bathtub, covered with bubbles, and Elizabeth’s mother developed the film and made prints for each of us of all three. We promptly had a giggling fit and compared pictures, each of us covered with bubbles, only our shoulders bare. I even had bubbles on top of my head, like Martha Washington’s wig or something.”
