Week 3 Theme 2

Filler in a monologue.

Ten minutes. Seventy-four already.

“Well, like, if you like want to play something like the trumpet, then take, like, band, you’d like a place like that.”

Eighty.

“You need to be like careful about your grades because middle school, like, doesn’t work like fifth grade. You get like five grades, not just, like, one.”

“Well, you can’t know, like, everybody because the school’s, like, huge. You make some new, like, friends, but you keep old friends.”

“Sixth grade’s like funny because you aren’t like big kids any more. You have to, like, wait for eighth grade before you like have like everybody’s respect again.”

Ninety-two.

“Yeah, there’s a, like, swimming pool, so you can go with like friends to the pool after school.”

“I go like every week, but some people, like, go every day to swim, like, laps.”

“You know like all that stuff they like tell you about puberty? Yeah, well, like, everybody grows a whole, like, foot. And some guys like start going, like, out. Like, everybody gossips.”

“Oh yeah, like, you start getting like dances in seventh grade. It’s like the best thing ever and the sixth graders like always try to get one, but they never like get it.”

One hundred and nine.

Puberty. The middle schoolers never told me about the contagious “likes.”