Day 22: Mini-Mean Girls

This past year, I volunteered twice a month in Layla's kindergarten class. For the most part, it was a great experience. I got to know (really know) Layla's teachers and when she would come home from school, bursting with stories from her day, I was able to put a face with all of the people she was talking about. The kids in her class knew me and would talk to me openly (sometimes too openly, there's nothing a five-year old loves more than an audience). Most of the kids were sweet, adorable, and innocent, textbook kindergartners.

But the more I saw around these kids the more I noticed that there were little cliques amongst them; The girly girls played with the other girly girls, the athletic girls with athletic girls, quiet girls with quiet girls. And then I noticed that the boys play with anyone, they have no preference for who they sneak up behind and scare. They're equal-opportunity crazy. It was the girls that divided. As the school year went on, the girls continued to divide into smaller, more particular groups. For example, my daughter was part of the " Artistic Girly Girls Who Are All Begging Their Parents To Let Them Pierce Their Ears" group (they might be cliquey but they're highly organized). But because my daughter's three closest friends are all slightly varying versions of her, I adore them all and pretty much think they're the best little girls ever. But they are definitely their own little group, one of many. Including one group I had hoped my daughter wouldn't have to face until at least middle school, if ever.

Mean girls.

Back when I was in kindergarten (insert "when dinosaurs roamed the Earth" joke here), I don't remember mean girls. At least, not like these mean girls. These are some full-on, eye rolling, bad attitude, high school quality mean girls, the likes of which would put Lindsey Lohan to shame. And they were only five years old.

There was one girl in particular who seemed especially hostile towards the other girls and served as their unofficial Queen bee. I spent the entire year trying to figure out why all of the little girls in the class (my daughter included) flocked to this girl. There was nothing especially remarkable about her (if she had been, say, half-unicorn and half famous trapeze artist then I would understand the fascination) but she wielded an amazing amount of power over all of the other girls. At first I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe all of the girls wanted to be her friend because she was just really nice and had a....quiet way of showing it, but I quickly learned that wasn't the case. For someone so young, she was surprisingly cold and almost menacing. I would watch her perform a move that I've always referred to as a "Down and up" where she would make eye contact with another little girl then slowly rake her eyes down the other girl, taking her in and as her eyes made their way back up, she would look into the other girl's eyes and smirk, letting her know she was neither intimidated nor particularly impressed by her. At 29 years old, I have never personally been able to master this look with as much detachment or venom as this little girl already could. Actually, I might be impressed if she wasn't giving her own special brand of stank eye to my daughter, who was one of her frequent "down and up" recipients. She would tease Layla about things, small things usually, but enough to upset an already sensitive child. Poor Layla, sweet, sweet Layla, who was used to everyone liking her had no idea how to handle this girl. It upset her and for awhile, I was at a loss over what to do about it. All I know is that no one ever told me that parenthood would include cultivating enough gumption to tell my daughter to carry on, to not only not let the mean girls bother her, but to be nice to the mean girls, whether they deserve her kindness or not. All I really want to tell her is to knock some sense into that silly girl, but I know that ultimately that won't solve anything. Two mean girls does not equal a nice girl.

I wish I could tell my daughter that it will get easier as she gets older. That eventually people grow up and "mean girls" cease to exist. But that, of course, would be a lie. Mean girls will always exist and some people never grow up and, unfortunately, I don't mean that in a fun, Peter Pan kind of way. Instead, mean girls  just produce more mean girls in an endless loop of bad attitudes and hurt feelings. As a parent, you hear a lot about bullying and mean kids in school, but you assume that that sort of thing starts later on as kids get older. It's a mistake to think this. It starts as young as these kids. I can only assume that by the time my daughter has a daughter (in 50 years, minimum) there will be mean girl cliques in the hospital nurseries.

What a scary thought.

Peter Jennings Was The Love Of My Life

Hey guys.

Since my blog has felt pretty heavy the last couple of weeks, I thought I'd lighten it up for a minute. At least until my next rant comes to me. So for now, it's story time.

The following is a true story. Because there are some things you just can't make up.

One of my earliest and clearest memories was the day in kindergarten when I was given a note to take home to my mom. I was a willful and stubborn child, but also obedient to a fault and I lived in constant fear of getting into trouble, so when I was handed a sealed envelope accompanied with a stern look, I panicked. I spent all day obsessing over what I could have done wrong. Did I forget to listen? Talk during story time? Was it because I said I wanted to be a dinosaur when I grew up? Or was it because of the incident?

The day before "the note" a little boy in my class, Tommy Ulander, had called me four eyes during recess, and I had retaliated by calling him impotent. Full disclosure: I (unsurprisingly) had absolutely no idea what impotent meant, but I heard it somewhere and managed to deduce from both the context and the tone of the conversation that it wasn't a good thing. It had the desired effect; Tommy ran off crying and I acted like I could care less even though my stomach felt like I had just eaten a brick that was on fire. I regretted it the second it came out of my mouth and to this day I've always worried that Tommy Ulander did, in fact, grow up to be impotent and is somewhere blaming it all on me. Anyway, I felt like such a pint-sized douche bag for the incident that I think I almost wanted to get caught for it. So when "the note" was presented to me, I figured I was about to be in some serious trouble.

But, as fate would have it, the note had nothing to do with a potentially impotent five-year-old. In fact, I wasn't even in trouble. At least, not directly.

There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. When I was five-years-old, I had a huge crush on an iconic television personality. No, not Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell or Leonardo DiCaprio on Growing Pains. My first love was Peter Jennings.

Yes, you're thinking of the right person. Peter Jennings, Canadian, Anchor of CBS World News Tonight from the year before I was born right up until his death seven years ago (I was absolutely devastated when he passed away, by the way). Never mind that he was old enough to be my grandfather, I adored him. I adored him so much that I watched his news broadcasts religiously, soaking up every word. And as it happened, that year there was a lot to soak up.

The year I entered kindergarten was the year the very tumultuous Gulf War began. I watched with fascination as Peter told me all about the Liberation of Kuwait, The Highway of Death, oil, and friendly fire. I don't know if it was the comforting tone of his voice or the way he could make something so complicated sound so amazingly simple, but I never felt scared while watching all of the horrific footage of the war. I actually kind of liked the fact that I knew what grown-ups were talking about for a change. I figured my fellow classmates and friends might also like to know what was going on in the world. So the more I learned, the more I went to school and shared my knowledge during show-and-tell, figuring I was probably doing the world (or at least, my own very limited world) some sort of public service by sharing what I knew.

Enter the problem.

You might not be surprised to learn that other kids my age didn't want to know what I knew. In fact, the things I knew scared the bejesus out of them (apparently, I didn't have Peter's knack for presenting vast knowledge in a simple, non-terrifying way) and worse, my antics really pissed off their parents. In turn, the pissed off parents started complaining to my teachers and demanding an end to my little impromptu news reports. This is where "the note" comes in.

While I have never known the exact wording of "the note", in my imagination it said something like this:

"Dear Debbie: Your insane five-year old future tree-hugger is scaring the crap out of the other children by coming in here and talking about depleting uranium and bulldozer assaults. Perhaps a cuddly teddy bear to bring in and show the children would be a nice change. P.S.: Ever heard of Sesame Street?!"

But that's just a guess.

What I do know is that if "the note" bothered my mom, she didn't show it. I was still allowed to watch the  news (and more importantly, Peter) but she did suggest that I do more showing and less telling. Suffice it to say, I took my Barbies to school the very next day.

To this day, I still like to watch the world news and still have an unexplainable attraction to news anchors that I've never quite been able to pin down. I don't know what it is...Maybe knowing exactly what's going on in the world before anyone else and knowing just how to explain it all to me? A certain sense of authority? Either that, or I have way more Daddy issues than I'm willing to admit.

And while I've loved others (Bill Weir, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw to name a few), I will always have a special place in my heart for Peter Jennings. He taught me the importance of knowing what was going on in the world around me, no matter how much the events of the world might freak me or anyone else out. He taught me that it was important to have my facts straight, to be well-informed, and that it was okay to be passionate about the issues that were important to me. All-in-all, not too bad for a first crush.