Junior High Kent

There's nothing funnier to me than thinking of how I used to be. 5-year old Kent was funny. 10-year-old Kent was even funnier. But they've got nothing on Junior High Kent.

When I arrived at Canyon View in the 7th grade, I was still in my elementary mindset. I had my worn out t-shirts, faded terry cloth shorts with holes in them, dorky H.I.S. jeans, etc. I didn't care how I looked in elementary school. I usually wore my soccer jersey on game days, and when I was younger, my cub scout shirt on den meeting days.

I shared a locker with the super popular Shawn Hansen, who expected me to go halfsies on a $2.50 locker room shelf when my yearly income was $10.00, $9.00 after taxes and tithing. Shawn had a sleek black Polo shirt (an actual Ralph Lauren) tucked into his awesome Girbaud jeans, complimented by a nice bowl haircut, parted neatly down the middle (the infamous "butt-crack" haircut that I eventually had until halfway through my mission). Somehow he had tons of friends already, even some that were girls, when all my elementary friends had somehow disappeared.

I deduced that his fashion sense was the reason for his success. I started looking around, paying attention to what everybody was wearing: Jean shorts were the biggest thing, and if you were especially rich, you had Girbaud jean shorts, long enough to roll up a few notches. Most of the kids wore polo shirts, or some kind of collared shirt that was always tucked in. If you wore a t-shirt, it'd better be a Mossimo, No Fear, or Big Johnson. Everybody that was anybody had a Jansport backpack, and the rich kids could afford the ones with the leather bottoms. If you didn't have a Jansport, then you'd better not show your face around with a no-name brand of backpack. The only acceptable shoes at the time had swooshes.

I consulted my wardrobe, and discovered that I was seriously lacking. 7th grade Kent had accumulated NOTHING, and I was totally unprepared. I asked a popular kid in my ward, JR Cook, how I could be popular:

"You don't have to buy $100 Girbaud jeans. You can probably just get some cheap $50 Lucky jeans at The Copper Rivet."

Oh. Just $50. Let me check my budget...

Since I didn't have the scrilla for the duds, I had to beg Mom to take me to the mall. Of course, we didn't go to any of the cool, small, trendy shops, we didn't even make it past Mervyn's, where the brand in our budget was Cheetah. So we got one pair of jean shorts and one pair of khaki shorts. We then spent about 8 bucks on a black polo shirt. I begged my mom to get the longer pair of jean shorts to leave room for the roll-up, but she balked at the idea: "You don't need shorts that stretch to your calves!"

I wore the polo shirt the next day, tucked in neatly to my khaki shorts, and, to my great disbelief, a popular girl in my English class said, "You look nice today, Kent." Which, when heard by a hormone-driven 7th grade boy, is roughly translated to: "I have a GIANT crush on you, Kent, and so does every other girl in this school!"

Nice!

Propelled by the adrenalin from the self-esteem boost, I knew I couldn't show up the next day in my crappy old clothes, and I also couldn't wear the same ones. No way Susan was taking me back to Mervyn's (or, as she called it, "Mervyll's") again. So I panicked, and ransacked my house, looking for clothes that would potentially get me another compliment. The best I could do was a red polo shirt that I stole from my older sister JoEllen's closet. The buttons were on the wrong side, but who cares? They went perfectly with my jean shorts. I could even get a tiny roll-up if I wore them a few centimeters low on my waist.

The next day came and went with no compliments from anybody, which, when analyzed by a hormone-driven 7th grade boy, roughly means: "You are the ugliest kid in the school, and we'd prefer if you never showed your face around here again."

Compliments became a drug that I depended on. And not those superficial compliments like "You're good at math" or "You're a nice person with a good heart". I KNOW I'm good at math and that I'm a great person!! How is that going to help me land Jolene Shaw, the pretty 8th grade brunette in my Algebra class?! I needed real, juicy compliments like "I like your shoes" or "Nice shirt". Jolene will notice how good-looking I am and follow me around school. She will know that she can see me near the vending machines after 1st period as I walk to 2nd period, and also remember that she can see me outside the gym after 5th period.

One of the hardest things to learn was how to do my hair. All through elementary school, I barely even touched my hair, let alone run a comb through it. Now all I cared about was my hair. The cool kids had the bowl haircuts, combed so it was right down the middle, perfectly straight the whole way. My hair is naturally wavy, so I couldn't get it to go straight without hair spray or gel. The problem with that was that P.E. was 1st period for me, so after the mandatory showers, I had to do my hair with no hair spray or gel. I wasn't about to ask Mom for my own personal thing of gel, so I went into their bathroom with a sandwich bag and filled it with gel. I kept this little baggie of gel hidden in my P.E. locker, but my archnemisis Kyle Clindt (more on him later) saw it and mocked me in front of the whole class.

"Kent has a bag of goop in his locker that he puts in his hair! What is it even?!?! Is it [not suitable for reading on a family blog]? Or is it [unmentionable]? Gross!!!"

I hated that kid. He was the fat jerky kid that somehow was popular because of his clothes and his obscene languages and vulgar jokes. He's one of the popular kids that is probably still holding on to his Junior High glory days because he dropped out of high school. I'm much better than that. I hold on to my Junior High glory days because they were so hilarious. Although I found his profile on Facebook and he's a Colts fan, so I guess I can forgive him.

That year's Christmas was a gold mine. I begged Mom for all sorts of clothes, and she got me some very nice collared shirts. One was this Arrow-brand collared shirt that became my go-to shirt. It went nicely with the royal blue-dyed High Sierra jeans I begged for (colored jeans were all the rage-denim jeans were dorky, unless they were jean shorts). I wore it as much as I could without being conspicuous about it, sometimes every other day. Then one day, Kyle Clindt observed mockingly, "Didn't you wear that shirt yesterday?"

"What?!?! This shirt?!?! NO!! I've never worn this shirt twice in a row. Plus, I have 2 of them! No, 3!"

The jig was up. I could never wear the same clothes in the same week again! I started keeping a wardrobe calendar to keep track of what I wore. At the beginning, I only had enough "cool" clothes to last a week, but my birthday was coming up, and that just meant a whole lot more begging!

I got a lot more clothes, but as my dependency on clothes became stronger, I became more particular about clothes. One item my mom refused to buy were the baggy jeans, which were becoming all the rage. So one day I tried on a pair of my dad's jeans, a khaki shaded pair of Bass brand jeans. They were size 36 waist. I was about 5'3" at the time, and 30" waists were big on me. But if I didn't tuck in my shirt, nobody would notice the bunched up belt loops around my waist. Plus I had plenty of room to roll up the legs.

8th grade was much better than 7th grade. Now that I had a decent wardrobe, I only needed to add a few things here and there, and before I knew it, I had 2 weeks' worth of clothes (I still kept my calendar). I also got a few odd jobs here and there, and saved up money to buy my own clothes. First purchase: A snow-white pair of Levi's 501 jeans (button-fly). This was clutch, because the girl I was in love with this year was Julie Hocking, and I was sure she had a thing for white jeans. In fact, one day I noticed that inside my blue English folder, the class that Julie shared with me, there was written in girl's handwriting:

"Kent is the cutest boy in the 8th grade, all the girls LOVE him!"

No way! I mean, I kind of saw it coming, what with my incredible sense of fashion, but wow! Who did it? Was it Julie herself? Or was it her annoying friend Lindsey who was the only girl in the class who talked to me? For weeks, I was perplexed at who had written that. I tried to sneak peeks at Julie's handwriting to analyze. I mean, come on, I caught her looking at me a few times, there's NO WAY she wasn't into me.

Then, one day at home, my sister JoEllen, the same one that pointed out each and every zit on my forehead, asked me: "Have you seen the note I left in your folder?"

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Talk about destroying all of my dreams. She could've just kept quiet and I wouldn't have struggled with my self-esteem all year. Oh, who am I kidding? All 8th graders struggle with their self-esteem.

I never did talk to Julie, nor Jolene, my 7th grade crush. So when I started 9th grade, I was determined to do something about my new crush, Katie Heward. She was this hot new girl in my 3rd period history class, and I couldn't stop dreaming about her. 9th grade I think is the most obsessive of all grades, I'm not really sure why, but I was totally in love with Katie. I would hatch up these fantasies of us meeting in random places, and her totally falling for me, and we'd ride off into the sunset. These fantasies were not unlike the ones I'd had for Julie and Jolene, but with Katie it was different, because I was determined to do something about it.

The worst part about my crush with Katie is that she sat RIGHT NEXT to me. Like 3 feet away. And I COULDN'T TALK TO HER! I'd never, ever, talked to a girl I liked, and I didn't know how to do it. I figured she would be so amazed by my good looks and bad boy image (which I was working DARNED hard on), that she would be overcome and just surrender her love to me. Surprisingly, this didn't happen.

So I went with plan B: talk to her friends. However, I didn't know any of her friends. I mean, I knew who they were, for crying out loud, I knew EVERYTHING about Katie that I could possibly find out (don't pretend like you weren't as obsessive about your Junior High crushes). But I couldn't talk to them, so I had to talk to someone who knew them. Because of my bad-boy image I was trying to maintain, I got sent to PASS (Positive Alternative to School Suspension) quite often, and the PASS lady, Robin, was this 20 year old college girl who was more interested in hanging out with 9th graders than disciplining them. Me and my friends took full advantage of Robin, and got sent to PASS as often as possible. Robin knew that I loved Katie, so she schemed up a plan to get Katie sent to PASS. Once this happened, Robin sent me to PASS to tell me about their convo:

Robin: So, Katie Heward and her friends were in PASS today.
Me: Keep talking...
Robin: I asked them what they thought about Kent Hansen.
Me: Tell me more, tell me more!
Robin: They said you were "totally cute".

SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!!!!

Me: Okay! Alright! Here we go!
Robin: So I said that you totally had a crush on Katie, and were going to the Christmas dance on Saturday, and you could meet then.

That was on December 14, 1994. Why do I remember this date? Cause I went sledding with my friends at Rock Canyon park and I broke my arm after going way too fast over a jump, and landed right on my wrist. I stayed at home for the next week, missing the dance, missing my only chance at true love.

I was desperate to unite with my princess, so I did everything I could to find out where she was going to be on New Year's Eve. I went over to her stake dance a few blocks away, but she wasn't there. My buddies found out she was at her friend Jessica's house, so we invited ourselves over there. Jessica opened the door to about 5 of us, and let us into the living room. Our older and cooler friend Logan did all the talking as I tried to figure out where Katie was. There was lots of girls laughing in the kitchen, but a wall separated me and my lover. It wasn't to be, apparently, as Jessica said that "we're in the middle of a game" and "boys aren't allowed". Don't you mean that "Men aren't allowed"? We told her that we'd be at the stake dance so we went back. I spent the rest of the dance staring at the doors waiting for Katie to arrive, but she never did.

I never did end up even so much as talking to Katie, but every time I saw her in the halls after that, I knew she was thinking, "It's too bad he broke his arm, because we'd have been married by now!" Or maybe not. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to ever talk to her or make an actual move on her. Don't worry-that didn't stop me from stalking her for the next few years.

And that's why Junior High Kent makes All Growed-up Kent laugh.

Note: I slightly changed everybody's names in this post so they can't Google themselves and find this. Also, I've found out since then that my one true love was Mullanie McKindondale.