I’ll never forget seeing the movie School of Rock for the first time.

When the movie came out 20 years (yes, somehow, some way, it’s already a two-decades-old film) ago, my dad took me and my older brother to see it in theaters. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was truly such an iconic movie that still holds up. It had the best rock ‘n roll music, cheeky and clever dialogue, and a fair few dozen references that I didn’t fully appreciate until I was a little older. But one that I understood right away, at the tender age of 10, was the moment in the movie in which Dewey (played effortlessly by Jack Black) mouthed off to another character by telling them to “read between the lines” and holding up three fingers. I knew immediately that he was telling the other person to ignore the two fingers and focus solely on the one in the middle, and my adolescent self thought this was hysterically funny and a totally brilliant way to give someone the finger without, well, actually doing it.

I’m not sure what prompted me to think about this scene randomly just a few minutes before I sat down to write this post, but naturally I started thinking about how life with diabetes is quite literally reading between the lines. We read in between the lines of our Dexcom or other CGM graphs constantly. Reading in between those lines can dictate whether we are having a good, bad, or somewhere-in-between diabetes day. Reading in between those lines often informs the next decision we make in terms of what we choose to eat, what we choose to do, and so forth. Reading in between those lines can contribute to an overwhelming amount of exhaustion, burnout, anger, frustration, relief, defeat, success, and sadness. No wonder the phrase (and intended meaning of) “read between the lines” inspires such passion!

So it shouldn’t be surprising that reading in between the lines makes me want to do my very best Dewey Finn/Jack Black impression and yell out to my diabetes itself, “read between the LINES!” and then kick a drum set aggressively before I storm out a room. But then I’m reminded that when you living with diabetes means that I’m hardcore. And as we learn in School of Rock, you’re not hardcore unless you LIVE hardcore.

So thanks for that reminder, School of Rock, that I’m hardcore and that just because having diabetes means that I do read between the lines often, it doesn’t mean that I can’t tell my diabetes to do the same.