The memories all came flooding back.

All it took was the first sentence of Lauri Hennessey's column, printed on page 5, about her daughter's entry into middle school.

For me, it was Burien's Sylvester at the dawning of the sixties or the death throes of the fifties, depending on how you look at it.

Back then they called it junior high, instead of middle school. They kept you for ninth grade, so they could torture you for one more year.

Having the same core group of elementary school friends move with you into middle school is the key to a successful transition, Lauri writes.

For sixth grade, my final elementary school year, I was wrenched from comfortable Sunnydale where Mathisons had been matriculating for two decades and sent to a brand new school, called Sunny Terrace. (Years later, my sixth-grade elementary school became a mental health center named after my mother, but that's another story.)

Sunny Terrace was in a school boundary black hole so the 30 sixth-grade students were split up into three different junior highs-Sylvester, Sunset and Puget Sound ("Public Sewer" is what we Sylvester and Sunset-bound kids would call it to taunt classmates headed there.)

So as September rolled around, instead of walking down the hill to Sunny Terrace with friends, I boarded a bus to Sylvester.

I entered the junior high halls without a clue on the etiquette of carrying books (the boys carried them in one arm to the side, girls carried them in front with two hands) or proper shirt-buttoning procedure (top button unbuttoned) To a socially awkward 12-year-old, these are vital things to know.

And I went from kindly Mr. Fischer to six different teachers a day.

I remember the terrible teachers clearly.

Like the scary female teacher who hung a sign over the classroom clock: "Time's passing, are you?"

Highline has become a very diverse school district with more than half the students having a language other than English as the principal language they speak at home. There is a lot of criticism that students aren't being taught by people who look like them.

My junior high teachers all looked like me in that sense.

But as I daydreamed in class I couldn't help but reflect that all these teachers had been students for at least 16 years. When they were finally released, they voluntarily chose to return to spend their whole working life in school. How could these people ever relate to me, I wondered.

Educators now look back at my time in school as the dark ages.

Junior highs have been expunged in favor of middle schools. Looping and team teaching, where students have the same teachers for a block of classes, are in vogue. The teachers get to know the students and the students get to know the teachers.

A story from my junior high days:

Back then, I was what considered a "square," not the smooth, sophisticated guy you see in my column mug shot. I don't know what the term would be now (nerd? geek?)

One day a "rink," (hood, juvenile delinquent, stoner) kindly offered me a piece of chocolate.

I didn't realize until I was racing to the boys restroom that he had rubbed off the words "Ex-Lax" from the chocolate's top.

Looking back as an adult, these ancient war stories are amusing.

But at the time, those 'tween years - full of body changes and raging hormones - were a tough time.

As Lauri says in her column, I survived.

Actually, I survived the way Lauri's daughter is thriving; I found friends. We were all misfits, but we were fellow misfits.

I went from being an underclassman to being an upper classman and each grade got easier.

When I had to restart the process all over in high school, it was less difficult. When you've been through hell, purgatory doesn't seem so bad.

In high school, I found a club outside of school and served two terms as president. The group was split into two factions-the pro-Erics and the anti-Erics. It doesn't get any better than that for a self-absorbed adolescent.

Most of the kids in Highline's schools today face much harder challenges than I ever did. So I am reluctant to glibly counsel that everything will be fine.

But, for those kids struggling through middle school, let me say, I bet you will figure it out and, please know, there are a lot more resources now to help you.