I talk a lot about Middle School Patricia. How she was convinced she would one day turn her fanfiction into The World’s Greatest Novel. How she consistently cited her allergy to Winter Mist Body spray (and other, similarly absurdly titled perfumes) as the sole reason she was not The Most Popular Girl In School. Her crush on EVERY BOY while simultaneously believing herself So Superior to all of them. However, while these are all mostly true, I think they get the most face time because they’re also the angsty, ridiculous image of what a 13-year-old girl is supposed to be. Except maybe blaming sneezing fits for lack of popularity. That one may have been all me.
Anyway, this weekend I decided to celebrate the lesser known aspects of Middle School Patricia when I was at Harris Teeter and found myself staring at the packets of Lipton/Knorr’s Pasta Sides. That is why they are number 1 on my list of things Middle School Patricia likes.
1. Pasta Sides
Actually, the Sesame Thai Noodle one was the best
These are basically like Rice-A-Roni, but with noodles. As such they are supremely easy to make; you just add water and put it in the microwave for 12 minutes. For some reason, they were my favorite lunch/dinner ever. Maybe because at the time the only things I could make on my own were sandwiches, Campbell’s soup, and these things. I also remember this one time my mom was telling me to lose weight and yelled, “Those noodles you like so much? They are supposed to feed A FAMILY OF FOUR!” And so I vowed never to eat them again and hurled into another spiral of self-doubt and anti-self-esteem with the words “A FAMILY OF FOUR” echoing through my head. Of course, as a 14-year-old, I already assumed that I was A) the fattest/ugliest person that had ever lived and that B) everyone who saw me was secretly talking and laughing about it, so naturally this did not help.
This weekend I bought some for maybe the first time since then, rationalizing that sharing it with Steven would get over the whole A FAMILY OF FOUR stigma. It was only then that I realized that, yes, it was supposed to feed A FAMILY OF FOUR but as a small side, meaning that my years of eating it for supper by itself were probably not The Most Shameful Thing I Have Ever Done. I did not, in fact, have a stomach the size of A FAMILY OF FOUR. Not that they are the healthiest thing ever either, but I’m glad I can stop stressing about that.
2. David Eddings’ Novels
Most of the cover art seems to be constructed from an album of Generic Fantasy ClipArt 1992
Allegedly, David Eddings started writing fantasy because he was shocked that The Lord of the Rings was still around, and many of his books were bestsellers. Looking back, I have no idea why I was obsessed with these books in middle school. Sure, they take place on a fantasy world, and some of the characters are sorcerers, but all of the books sort of sound the same. An ordinary farm boy discovers his aunt is really a sorceress and they go on a quest to save a magical stone. Spoiler alert: he is really the descendant of a long-lost king whose destiny it is to fight an evil god. There’s 10 books about Garion in all, and my overwhelming memory of all of them is riding horses through the rain. Eddings’ women also all seem to be variations on the same theme of Women Are Mysterious and Kind of Bitchy. Maybe they’re meant to be empowered? He’s pretty good at world-building, including giving all the different races complex histories, although sometimes it gets slightly annoying how everyone from Sendaria is practical or how Tolnedrans only care about money. Sometimes the writing is also pretty repetitive, but, since Steven and I are reading them aloud to each other, we’ve devised several quick fixes to break that up:
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