What??

My friend posted this "day in the life of a middle school-er in the 2000s" article:

A Day in the Life of a Middleschooler in the 2000s 

I read it, but it didn't seem to ring true to me, because we were lower-middle class(if that...) and couldn’t afford most of the things referenced. Here is my updated version:

7:00am - you wake up to the sound of a shitty bird alarm clock you got from the clearance section of some store (probably Big Lots) because you do not have a cell phone yet.  You take a shower and get dressed and then go stand by the door and wait for the bus.

8:00am - you wait in the gym to be dismissed and then go to your homebase class.  You pass notes on regular notebook paper, using one of the only five gel pens you could afford to buy.  If anyone asks to borrow your gel pens, you have a mini panic attack, because people often “borrow” things forever, and you know your gel pen stock is not going to be replenished until Christmas.  You fold your note up into a tiny square or triangle before delivering it.  You don't listen to music because you didn't have an iPod and it probably wasn't allowed in school anyway.

11:30am - Lunch time - You buy french fries and a chocolate milk, totaling $1.35, which means 65 cents of the $2 your mom gave you for lunch is yours to keep.  It will go to your gym locker, which is like your personal safe/bank.  You sit with your friends, who are also eating garbage, tasteless french fries, and talk about which people are pregnant and who is dating whom and who got new glasses and whose hair is inexplicably straight today when it wasn't at all yesterday. On that note, you also wonder aloud to one another why certain classmates developed boobs overnight (stuffed bras, for sure.)

3:10pm - School is out so you go out to the bus and get on.  You're the last person to get off, so this bus ride is going to last forty minutes at least.  You talk to everyone, buy fundraiser candy from someone (assuming you haven't already done so recently - you're not made of money, you know.)  You maybe do some homework but probably just sit, slumped down in the seat, staring out the window and dreading the rest of the week.

4:00pm - you finally get home from school and do your massive quantities of homework for the next four hours.  Your friend doesn't text you because you don't have a phone, but you couldn't have answered them even if they did text you, because your parents refused to get phone plans that included texting, which meant each text cost additional money, and even sending three texts in a month was enough to get you yelled at.

8:00pm - you finish your homework in time to head to the middle-school dance!  You arrive and everyone else is wearing Hollister shirts, but since your parents never allowed you to buy a shirt that costs forty dollars, you are wearing two year old garage sale jeans and a t-shirt from JC Penny.  For the next few years everyone but you will be a walking billboard, and they will try to make you feel bad for wearing shoes from Walmart.

8:15pm - All of your friends are dating boys even though you're all 12 years old.  They make you feel like you're weird for not dating someone, so you hope to find a boyfriend too.  But you don't know where to look, so you set your sights on a kid you don't even know and then feel heartbroken when he doesn't read your mind and ask you to dance.

8:30pm - Refreshments table.