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"plaintext": "When I was in middle school in 2005, a cohort of 11 to 14 year olds developed their own secret language. "
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"plaintext": "Language is shaped by space, environment, and time, and this language was as much a reflection of this awkward, mid-puberty, economically-liminal space and time as it could be, to a comical degree."
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"plaintext": "At Benjamin Franklin Middle School (now closed—budget cuts), every student had to take Physical Education. A little sprinkle of trauma for anyone between the ages of 10 and 14 years old trying to figure out gender expression, body image, and social dynamics, just in case your home life was affirming and warm and safe. In a lot of ways, P.E. was one of the more vulnerable parts of your day Monday through Friday. You had to change in a locker room full of your peers, finding creative ways to obscure a body you barely recognized week to week. You changed into a school-branded grey t-shirt that read “PANTHERS” across the chest, prone to underarm sweat stains, and dark-blue mesh shorts. Optional sweatpants in the winter if your parents could afford the extra $20 for them, but otherwise, it was the Bay Area, and no one was dying of hypothermia in 38 minutes."
},
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"plaintext": "Getting re-dressed back into the outfit you arrived in was often worse than the previous change, because you were possibly sweaty and emotionally ruffled from being bad at whatever sport you were assigned that day. Or in my case, from choosing to be bad at said sport, because actually trying my best was not only cringe, but didn’t fit the persona I was actively crafting. I had a short list of P.E. activities I’d exert effort for: running the weekly mile in the allotted time, because being slow was associated with the sin of sloth, and running fast was not an immediate threat to my femininity. Badminton, because I figured the “birdie” was cute and dainty. "
},
{
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"plaintext": "I wouldn’t try at basketball. The ball was too large, too loud, and dangerous; the shoes on an indoor court too squeaky and overwhelming. Dodgeball was unacceptable. Soccer was too dynamic. It didn’t offer me enough mental space to monitor how I looked while running, kicking, or especially playing goalie. I resolved to never put my face on the line to stop a random 12-year-old from scoring a point. My face was real, a currency I had to protect, and a soccer point was literal imaginary currency. This math was always easy for me, and even my fellow children could see through the fake apologetic shrug I offered when I failed to stop the ball entering the net. "
},
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"plaintext": "I had a good childhood, but P.E. in middle school was the dark spot, which is a sweet deal as far as childhoods can go. I attended the bad-ish public middle school, where some people had actual problems. Some people were poor or had abusive step-dads, or were 13-year-old mothers to infants they took the school bus home to. I considered myself lucky to simply be socially awkward and temporarily ugly by my own math. A silver lining. And Mondays and Fridays were the silver linings of P.E. itself, because in a sea of awkward kids in grey and blue uniforms, we developed a language that allowed us a makeshift attempt at carving out who we were."
},
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"plaintext": "The way it worked was: every Friday, we were instructed to take home our gym clothes and run them through the laundry (they definitely needed it by Friday). The stakes were high. You’d get points off your grade if you returned on Monday without clean clothes on your person before entering the locker room, literally putting your middle school hygiene and executive functioning on the rubric. For obvious reasons, we didn’t really want to carry our dirty clothes around loose, or shove them in our already-stuffed backpacks all day. So it was customary to bring a small bag to keep your sweaty clothes separate from your other belongings. On Friday, you’d put your detergent-deprived P.E. clothes in a bag of your choice. You (or your tired mother) would wash them over the weekend, and you’d return with them on Monday morning. Simple enough, right?"
},
{
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"plaintext": "I started out grabbing just any old bag. A drawstring bag, a Safeway grocery bag, whatever was handy. But then I started paying attention. "
},
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"plaintext": "The cool kids took bags that ostensibly said something about where they bought their real, non-uniform clothes, and used them to tote around their gross gym clothes. We might all be wearing the exact same articles of clothing, but it meant something to carry yours in an Anchor Blue bag. Or, if you really wanted to flex on someone, a Hollister bag or one from Abercrombie & Fitch."
},
{
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"plaintext": "This is something we quickly picked up on. It was mostly the girls who participated in this shared language, but a good chunk of the boys did too. To be a middle schooler is to be vulnerable. You are by definition awkward (even if you don’t know it). You’re broke (even if your parents aren’t). You’re in a position of relative powerlessness. But you are desperately carving out some identity for yourself. You get little moments to say something about yourself, and say something you must."
},
{
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"plaintext": "A Hot Topic bag full of musty gym clothes said “I’m alternative and interesting, and I go against the grain”. A stale Victoria’s Secret bag: “I see myself as a woman now, and you will too, even if all I bought was Sweet Pea body mist with $9 from my 13th birthday card”. A stinky Spencer’s bag said “I make plans with older kids, and my mom doesn’t come to the mall with me anymore.”"
},
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"plaintext": "If you wanted to cheat the system, you could: you just borrowed a shopping bag from someone in your home with a little more disposable income than you. Your mom or older sibling. It wasn’t good form to ask for details regarding someone’s smelly clothes bag. So if you were carrying one from an elusive Nordstrom, that was your business. The closest Nordstrom was of course, 30 minutes away, and we all knew it was your mother’s, but that was fine. Maybe you had a bag from the Coach outlet . Your dad had bought your mom something there for her birthday or Christmas, and you’d asked to keep the bag for unspecified reasons. We all knew that you were meticulously folding it (those ones were always hard cardstock, never plastic) and placing it on a shelf each Monday after school to keep it in pristine condition, because you weren’t getting another one any time soon. We would engage in the shared suspension of disbelief, but you had to maintain your cover. "
},
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"plaintext": "This all feels so quaint in hindsight. The idea of trying to signal identity and belonging as a pre-Instagram pre-teen, in whatever way you could. The latching onto status symbols that are not even all that impressive, and often not even your own, in a mad dash to say something about who you were. Because the bottom tier of this strange communication system wasn’t even to have a bag from a “cheap” store (put some respect on Forever 21 and Icing’s names). It was to say nothing when you had the opportunity to say something. "
},
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"plaintext": "By the time I moved on to Hogan High (now closed—budget cuts), my armor had solidified, puberty was crawling to an end, and more importantly, I had decided who I was: quiet, academically-inclined, and aloof, biding my time. I had a bit more a voice to say who I was, and say something I did. I viewed high school as a waiting room for real life, and I still maintain that I was kind of right. Now, at age 32 with my husband, I joke about the old shopping bag practice and wonder aloud what kind of socioeconomic flex our future child might grasp at should they continue this cursed tradition. An Amouage or Creed shopping bag? A Cartier bag from 5 years before they were even born? Does Bitcoin make shopping bags?"
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "Maybe they lead a program to teach each kid to sew reusable drawstring bags out of sustainably-sourced thrifted fabric, keeping waste out of landfills, and distributing the knowledge equally among their peers along with workshops on reducing water waste while doing laundry. Who knows? Some things never change, and middle schoolers will always get musty, but maybe they’ll do mustiness better than I ever did."
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"path": "/a/3mnsoep5eyz23-the-makeshift-language-of-musty-gym-bags",
"publishedAt": "2026-06-08T22:00:15+00:00",
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"textContent": "When I was in middle school in 2005, a cohort of 11 to 14 year olds developed their own secret language. \nLanguage is shaped by space, environment, and time, and this language was as much a reflection of this awkward, mid-puberty, economically-liminal space and time as it could be, to a comical degree.\nAt Benjamin Franklin Middle School (now closed—budget cuts), every student had to take Physical Education. A little sprinkle of trauma for anyone between the ages of 10 and 14 years old trying to figure out gender expression, body image, and social dynamics, just in case your home life was affirming and warm and safe. In a lot of ways, P.E. was one of the more vulnerable parts of your day Monday through Friday. You had to change in a locker room full of your peers, finding creative ways to obscure a body you barely recognized week to week. You changed into a school-branded grey t-shirt that read “PANTHERS” across the chest, prone to underarm sweat stains, and dark-blue mesh shorts. Optional sweatpants in the winter if your parents could afford the extra $20 for them, but otherwise, it was the Bay Area, and no one was dying of hypothermia in 38 minutes.\nGetting re-dressed back into the outfit you arrived in was often worse than the previous change, because you were possibly sweaty and emotionally ruffled from being bad at whatever sport you were assigned that day. Or in my case, from choosing to be bad at said sport, because actually trying my best was not only cringe, but didn’t fit the persona I was actively crafting. I had a short list of P.E. activities I’d exert effort for: running the weekly mile in the allotted time, because being slow was associated with the sin of sloth, and running fast was not an immediate threat to my femininity. Badminton, because I figured the “birdie” was cute and dainty. \nI wouldn’t try at basketball. The ball was too large, too loud, and dangerous; the shoes on an indoor court too squeaky and overwhelming. Dodgeball was unacceptable. Soccer was too dynamic. It didn’t offer me enough mental space to monitor how I looked while running, kicking, or especially playing goalie. I resolved to never put my face on the line to stop a random 12-year-old from scoring a point. My face was real, a currency I had to protect, and a soccer point was literal imaginary currency. This math was always easy for me, and even my fellow children could see through the fake apologetic shrug I offered when I failed to stop the ball entering the net. \nI had a good childhood, but P.E. in middle school was the dark spot, which is a sweet deal as far as childhoods can go. I attended the bad-ish public middle school, where some people had actual problems. Some people were poor or had abusive step-dads, or were 13-year-old mothers to infants they took the school bus home to. I considered myself lucky to simply be socially awkward and temporarily ugly by my own math. A silver lining. And Mondays and Fridays were the silver linings of P.E. itself, because in a sea of awkward kids in grey and blue uniforms, we developed a language that allowed us a makeshift attempt at carving out who we were.\nThe way it worked was: every Friday, we were instructed to take home our gym clothes and run them through the laundry (they definitely needed it by Friday). The stakes were high. You’d get points off your grade if you returned on Monday without clean clothes on your person before entering the locker room, literally putting your middle school hygiene and executive functioning on the rubric. For obvious reasons, we didn’t really want to carry our dirty clothes around loose, or shove them in our already-stuffed backpacks all day. So it was customary to bring a small bag to keep your sweaty clothes separate from your other belongings. On Friday, you’d put your detergent-deprived P.E. clothes in a bag of your choice. You (or your tired mother) would wash them over the weekend, and you’d return with them on Monday morning. Simple enough, right?\nI started out grabbing just any old bag. A drawstring bag, a Safeway grocery bag, whatever was handy. But then I started paying attention. \nThe cool kids took bags that ostensibly said something about where they bought their real, non-uniform clothes, and used them to tote around their gross gym clothes. We might all be wearing the exact same articles of clothing, but it meant something to carry yours in an Anchor Blue bag. Or, if you really wanted to flex on someone, a Hollister bag or one from Abercrombie & Fitch.\nThis is something we quickly picked up on. It was mostly the girls who participated in this shared language, but a good chunk of the boys did too. To be a middle schooler is to be vulnerable. You are by definition awkward (even if you don’t know it). You’re broke (even if your parents aren’t). You’re in a position of relative powerlessness. But you are desperately carving out some identity for yourself. You get little moments to say something about yourself, and say something you must.\nA Hot Topic bag full of musty gym clothes said “I’m alternative and interesting, and I go against the grain”. A stale Victoria’s Secret bag: “I see myself as a woman now, and you will too, even if all I bought was Sweet Pea body mist with $9 from my 13th birthday card”. A stinky Spencer’s bag said “I make plans with older kids, and my mom doesn’t come to the mall with me anymore.”\nIf you wanted to cheat the system, you could: you just borrowed a shopping bag from someone in your home with a little more disposable income than you. Your mom or older sibling. It wasn’t good form to ask for details regarding someone’s smelly clothes bag. So if you were carrying one from an elusive Nordstrom, that was your business. The closest Nordstrom was of course, 30 minutes away, and we all knew it was your mother’s, but that was fine. Maybe you had a bag from the Coach outlet . Your dad had bought your mom something there for her birthday or Christmas, and you’d asked to keep the bag for unspecified reasons. We all knew that you were meticulously folding it (those ones were always hard cardstock, never plastic) and placing it on a shelf each Monday after school to keep it in pristine condition, because you weren’t getting another one any time soon. We would engage in the shared suspension of disbelief, but you had to maintain your cover. \nThis all feels so quaint in hindsight. The idea of trying to signal identity and belonging as a pre-Instagram pre-teen, in whatever way you could. The latching onto status symbols that are not even all that impressive, and often not even your own, in a mad dash to say something about who you were. Because the bottom tier of this strange communication system wasn’t even to have a bag from a “cheap” store (put some respect on Forever 21 and Icing’s names). It was to say nothing when you had the opportunity to say something. \nBy the time I moved on to Hogan High (now closed—budget cuts), my armor had solidified, puberty was crawling to an end, and more importantly, I had decided who I was: quiet, academically-inclined, and aloof, biding my time. I had a bit more a voice to say who I was, and say something I did. I viewed high school as a waiting room for real life, and I still maintain that I was kind of right. Now, at age 32 with my husband, I joke about the old shopping bag practice and wonder aloud what kind of socioeconomic flex our future child might grasp at should they continue this cursed tradition. An Amouage or Creed shopping bag? A Cartier bag from 5 years before they were even born? Does Bitcoin make shopping bags?\nMaybe they lead a program to teach each kid to sew reusable drawstring bags out of sustainably-sourced thrifted fabric, keeping waste out of landfills, and distributing the knowledge equally among their peers along with workshops on reducing water waste while doing laundry. Who knows? Some things never change, and middle schoolers will always get musty, but maybe they’ll do mustiness better than I ever did.",
"title": "The makeshift language of musty gym bags"
}