Those two years in junior high weren’t wasted, were they? They were the best two years of my life, right? It’s hard to say; it could have gone either way.

This book is a slightly fictionalized account of my life in junior high school, the “lost” years, inspired by actual events. Embellishments of strange happenings were unnecessary because human foibles ran rampant. However, most names and places have been altered so as not to embarrass the guilty, inept and downright scurvy. The stories are retold in a series of vignettes which best captured my mood at the time. Troubling, boring, exasperating and anxiety-ridden; I believe those adjectives accurately summed up my junior high experience. For me, seventh and eighth grades in a rural village school system were difficult to negotiate and get a firm grip on. I had prospered in elementary school, with high school looming on the horizon. But those two intervening grades flummoxed and aggravated me. I managed to stumble and muddle through them and just barely escaped, mostly sane I think. Anyway, I couldn’t help but write down some of my humorous misadventures that unwittingly occurred along the way. Hopefully you will laugh along with me. Maybe at me as well!

I. Mayputz

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