Mean Moms and BFFs, Once-Removed

I've been thinking about friends a lot lately.

Two years ago when I was pregnant with Ben, my best friend moved to Portland. I have other friends, but nothing compares to your best friend, especially when that friend is equal parts hilarious and compassionate, a fun-loving single girl who manages to be amazing with my kids. I'll put it this way: If anyone was waiting in the wings to be my BFF, they had a tough act to follow. 

But instead of throwing myself down on the ground in front of her moving truck and begging her not to go, I had to be a grown-up. Ugh. So now my best friend lives 2,000 miles away, a horrid reality that I refer to as Best Friend, Once Removed. Now I'm left to navigate the mess that is female friendship.

And it's a jungle out there.

I'm writing a paper about Tina Fey right now, so maybe that's why "Mean Girls" is in my head, but I can't stop thinking about how well that movie described how women can be. The problem is, I assumed (wrongfully) that the "Mean Girls" mentality ended after high school. It doesn't. At least, not for everyone.

It's an epidemic called "Mean Moms". Basically, they were the stuck-up, insecure girls in high school that grew up to spawn (God help us all....) future stuck-up insecure girls, and no matter if you're three years out of high school or thirty, these women never escaped that adolescent mentality. And,  just like back then, they want to try to make you feel like the small one. You know these women. They're not real friends. They're one-uppers. If you like to feed your kids organic food, they feed their kids vegan organic food and then proceed to monologue at you for fifteen minutes about how cheese is a silent killer, or some other such nonsense. If your kid plays soccer, their kid takes Mandarin Chinese classes because Oprah says that kids who know seven languages before kindergarten are more likely to blah blah blah blah.  

Let me be clear about something. I think every parent should be their kid's biggest fan. If you are a parent who doesn't think your kid is the greatest thing that ever walked the Earth, then something is fundamentally wrong with you. But with women like this, it's not about the kid. It's about them. Sure, learning a second language is great for a kid, but it's really about the bragging rights and the end goal of you walking away feeling like an inferior parent (person, really). It's fake and annoying, and let's face it, it gives women in general a bad name.

Like I said, I have great friends, friends that certainly don't fall into this category at all. However, having kids who go to classes, school, Sunday school, and so on, I run into these women constantly. Our kids are friends, at least for the time being, as three-year-olds aren't typically elitists. Basically, as a mom, "mean moms" are just another thing I have to suck it up and deal with, as I probably shouldn't expect my kids to exclusively be friends with my friends kids for the rest of their lives.

I have to be the one who teaches my kids to ignore the "mean girls"....while I'm still trying to ignore their mothers...