13

I had a really interesting collision of my school and home life today.  I was getting ready to discuss the end of Huck Finn with my AP Jrs and so I asked them to write a journal entry about what they were like when they were thirteen.  My reason for doing this is that the end of Huck Finn is often disappointing to them, because they feel let down that Huck goes back to messing around with Tom instead of treating Jim like a human being, and I wanted to remind them of what they were like at that age, to give them some perspective.  So I was really surprised at the push back I got from them -- they didn't want to go there!  Several of them said they couldn't remember anything from middle school.  I said, It was three years ago, you guys -- but for them, it was still so fresh they almost couldn't talk about it.  So I'm sitting here tonight at dinner across the table from my own thirteen year old, and I'm hoping that her days are going all right and that when she thinks back on them, it won't be with horror.   I guess it was too soon for me to ask them to reflect on it.  Sometimes they act like they're so mature and I forget that they are still so fragile.