Tweenache in the Time of Hashtags

By Judy Balan

From the author of How to Stop Your Grownup from Making Bad Decisions, here's another season in the life of #NinaThePhilosopher.

#Tweenache101: First, there's PMS (it's real and it's painful and can someone please make it stop?). Second, there's #TheBoy. Yes, that's right. The BOY. And third, there's a #NewDad in the picture. Actually, he's an old dad, but if Nina's never met him before, he totally counts as new, right? And worst of all, there's the #NerdWars. There's a new nerd in the classroom - and she might be even nerdier than Nina. This. Can't. Be. Good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harper
• Release date: Jan 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9789351775515

Judy Balan

Judy Balan is a writer and consulting psychological astrologer with a Post Graduate Diploma in Jungian Studies. She has also published six novels including the bestselling Two Fates: The Story of My Divorce. Judy lives in Chennai with her daughter and their two retrievers.   

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1

Middle School Madness: Day 1

Posted by Nina on 6 June 2014 at 4.13 p.m.

So. I am officially a middle schooler. I’m in Class 7 now! I know, I know, Class 8 is middle school, but my school is cool and alternative like that. So till Class 6, I was in Montessori, but now I have a new, grownup syllabus. Meaning, I get to study real subjects like physics, chemistry and biology instead of some made-up nonsense like ‘nature talk’ and ‘health talk’. Also, I am now in the middle school campus with NO seesaws, jungle gyms and in-house nannies for an assisted lunch experience. I don’t understand why nobody sees what a big deal this is. Everyone’s fussing about the fact that Nikki is now in Class 10. HELLO. I am in a campus with no jungle gyms! This is a huge transition for me. Speaking of transitions, what’s up with everyone asking me how old I am (I’ll be twelve on the fifteenth) and going, ‘Ohhh, just one more year and you’ll be a teenager!’ Like the whole point of twelve is to get to thirteen or something.

And sometimes they go, ‘Ah, so you’re officially a tween!’ What on earth is a tween? When I asked my aunt Neeti (mom’s cousin), she said, ‘Oh, it’s short for between, darling. You’re almost a lady, you see!’ She said it like it was a compliment. That’s what confused me. How can the phrase ‘almost a lady’ mean anything good? Also, going by all the ladies around me, I am not sure I’m in any hurry to get there.

But never mind Aunt Neeti. She’s a bit wonky. I mean, she says ‘darling’ at the end of all her sentences no matter whom she is talking to, and she pulls people close to kiss them, but only kisses the air. Every time. On BOTH cheeks. What IS that? Mom says it’s a page-three thing. Kissing the air and calling people ‘darling’, that is. She thinks Aunt Neeti is ‘all air, no content’. Aunt Neeti appears on page three of the newspapers all the time and she loves telling everyone about it. And everyone in our extended family keeps talking about how cool Aunt Neeti is because she appears in the papers so frequently. Mom gets really riled up and goes, ‘Pah! Look at everyone fawning over her like she discovered the cure for Ebola or something. How is going to a party and having your picture taken an achievement?’ For once, I do agree with Mom, but I find it hilarious every time she loses it over Aunt Neeti.

The other day, I told Mom that it might be because deep down she also wants to go to parties and have her picture taken. Big mistake. Mom said, ‘Yeah, thank you, Dr Mental, for your expert analysis,’ and fed me sprouts all day.

I should have shut up, but I said, ‘Truth hurts,’ and she extended the sprouts regimen by a whole week.

But I digress. Coming back to my first day of middle school, my new class teacher, Ms Dorothy D’Souza is the opposite of the one I had last year. She’s so nice I feel bad for her. I mean, she actually says things like, ‘I don’t believe in homework and rules and strict discipline because I want you to love learning,’ and ‘I want you to come on time to school because you don’t want to miss out on another exciting day, and not because someone would punish you if you showed up late!’

You tell me, is this going to work? She’s so naïve and lost, just like the Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Anyway, I’m not complaining after the hell I had last year with Poo-jar Dig-shit. I just don’t want the class to take advantage of her (which they will) and drive her away. She’s like a lovable, golden retriever that has lost its way into our premises, and I really, really want to keep it. She even looks like a golden retriever. No, really. She comes bounding into the classroom with bright-eyed joy. She looks exactly like a golden retriever chasing a ball.

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Speaking of which, I think every person looks like an animal. Everyone. It has nothing to do with how good or bad looking you are. Take Ryan Gosling, for example. Mom loves him. Doesn’t he look like a cocker spaniel? Flappy ears, tongue out, running towards you. Just picture it. I can give you more examples. Miley Cyrus is a lizard, Shah Rukh Khan is a chimp, and Hilary Duff is a pony. Sometimes, when I look at a person, the first image that pops into my head is their animal equivalent. It’s so funny sometimes that I have to control the urge to break into a laughing fit. Mom told me I’m not supposed to think like that because it’s rude. This is another thing I don’t get. How can you just tell someone not to ‘think like that’? It’s not a choice. It’s just the way your brain works. It’s as useless as saying, ‘Don’t be sad.’

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Okay, I’ll continue tonight. Nikki’s singing very loudly with her headphones on, and I can’t concentrate.

MOMster INC.

Posted by Nina on 6 June 2014 at 8.58 p.m.

Remember last year when Mom was dating that rapper, fighting with Nikki, planning an impromptu wedding and acting like a total teenager? Yeah, that seems like such a long time ago. I remember complaining constantly about how I just wanted a NORMAL family. Now, BLG is clearly amusing himself by giving me exactly what I wanted – a NORMAL mother. And oh my god, it is NOT fun by any stretch of the imagination. You see, my mom is in some kind of atoning phase. Yeah, she feels like she made a string of mistakes last year and was not a ‘good mom’, so she’s trying to make up for it in extremely weird ways. For starters, she has quit her advertising job and is now working from home. She’s pursuing all sorts of new hobbies and exploring new lines of work. It started out with normal stuff like content writing, but then she found that she needed something that her ‘soul loves’, so she tried candle making. Yes, she went to a class and everything. But then, she was really bad at it. She kept mixing all the wrong scents in the name of fusion, and it was just awful. We didn’t want to discourage her initially, so we kept complimenting her even when she made candles that made us gag. Nikki and I couldn’t remember their names, so we had our own secret names: sour curd, rotten banana, smelly sock and so on. But then, she went ahead and made one that was so bad that we called it armpit. That was it. We told her. And it crushed her, just like we expected.

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But I don’t get it even now. How could she not know it? She said, ‘It’s difficult to be objective about art, especially when you are the artist.’

I said, ‘But Mom, that might be true if you’ve drawn a picture and can’t tell if it’s really beautiful. But this is a SMELL. How can your NOSE not be objective?’

To which she said, ‘Same reason people have a problem with other people’s farts, but will not hold their noses for their own farts. Because the nose automatically forgives a bad smell if it emanates from the person it’s attached to.’

I thought that was quite clever. For Mom, I mean.

But back to Mom’s loola career choices. She tried crocheting (again, did NOT go well), baking (don’t ask) and pottery, before realizing she really wasn’t good with her hands. Nikki and I were hoping she’d go back to work because we’re just not used to having her around at home ALL THE TIME, you know? Hovering when we browse the web, obsessing over our nutrition, enforcing new laws on oral hygiene (I KNOW, right?), asking us about homework and – wait for it – including a new word to her vocabulary: ‘BEDTIME’. Yes! We’re both expected to get to bed by 9.00 p.m. on weekdays and 10.30 p.m. on weekends. Nikki tried to play the Class 10 board exams card, but Mom told her she should be working that much harder during the day to make up for lost study time at night. Why can’t you guys just close the door and stay awake, you ask? Well, the Wi-Fi router is in Mom’s room and she turns it off by ‘bedtime’. And, not to be a drama queen or anything, but I refuse to stay awake in a world without Wi-Fi.

I completely forgot to tell you about all my other teachers and the new kids in class. Will blog tomorrow. I’m two minutes away from ‘bedtime’.

2

The New Girl

Posted by Nina on 10 June 2014 at 3.33 p.m.

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So. There are two new girls in class this year – Shreya and Anna. Shreya is okay, but not someone I’d want to be friends with. For starters, she looks like a princess. An ACTUAL princess. Like she bathes in milk every day and has ten servants to curl her hair to perfection and get her ready for school. As expected, Shreya already has a fan following. Plus, she lives on Wallace Garden Road. I’m only going to say this: I don’t know how to talk to people who live on that road. Most of the kids in my class think it’s the coolest thing, but I just don’t get it. How can an address make a person cool? I don’t know about you, but I don’t like my coolness being attributed to something OUTSIDE of me.

But enough about Shreya. Anna is the one I need to keep an eye on. I would