Mary McNamara: Middle school is the new high school. Catch up, pop culture

It might have been the full-page dress code or the Instagram photos of the already decorated lockers or all the sleek new haircuts framing expressions of careful ennui as they made their way down the early morning sidewalk. Whatever the culture-tipping factor, delivering my third and youngest child to her first day in seventh grade, I realized with a sudden jolt that middle school is the new high school.

And pop culture had best catch the heck up.

For years we have labored under the belief that adult life, or at least adult neuroses, began in high school. How else to explain the enormous role those years claim in our storytelling, personal and professional? Oh the pain, ah the pleasure of navigating those