Day 41

Name: Dunya

Profession: Student, Mountain Trail Middle School

Location: Mountain Trail Middle School

Question: Why are you where you are right now?

Answer: I was just kind of thrown here

Today I had the opportunity to Skype Dunya, a middle school student in Scottsdale, Arizona. The conversation went exactly how I would have expected it to go: She giggled and talked about her friends, how her “naggy” mother and father were divorced, the weather, sports, and how “really annoying” her brothers were. I can’t say that the middle school group (twelve- through fourteen-year-olds) is my favorite. Generally, and I do have a weakness for generalities, these students tend to be awkward, angst-ridden, pubescent Tilly’s customers in a phase that leaves them far too concerned with their own image. And yet despite this, they are remarkably oblivious to their own social gracelessness, which can be irksome to anyone who isn’t going through the same thing.

This is why Dunya shocked me with the following statement: “I don’t really have a personality. I change a lot. I’ll be girly one day and the next day I’ll be all tomboy, and I’ll be all skater girl the next. I change a lot.”

A former middle school student myself, I don’t remember ever carrying myself with the knowledge that I was in the middle of the biggest metamorphosis I would ever experience. Dunya, on the other hand, seemed to not only be aware of it, but was completely unembarrassed by the fact. She explained to a complete stranger that she was emerging from her cocoon naked and exposed without a trace of shame. Most pre-teens I know are hardly so self-aware, or so bold.

So while her story wasn’t one of love and war, four sentences were more than enough to allow me the benefiting of truly meeting young Ms. Dunya, a beautiful exception.