Girl Fight

The girl fight thing, the Queen Bees, the verbal black eyes that young girls give: it totally freaks me out. While I understand intellectually that it happens and while I understand how hormonally it ramps up, I do not understand why, after all of everything, we chicks need to repeat this nonsense ad vomit for ever and ever. Like starting at age 9, in the 4th grade. Like it's starting for my kid. 

The drama! The holy drama surrounding this fly-weight girl who flits and flutters and bumps into walls and who can not seem to make it through one day without tripping over her own limbs! I am not even sure she sees the drama and what she does see, she doesn't see clearly (hence the wall crashing). I am on the fence as to whether this is a good or a bad thing, but she is about a half meadow filled with fairies and play dough from the fence that separates her childhood from her tween-dom so I want to scream: beware! They are mines buried along the way.

We could have held her back. But when she was just-turned-five, she marched off to kindergarten with a round baby face and we rationalized that she wouldn't be driving until late in her senior year (we know, too well, how bad things can happen with cars). Plus, I had two other kids at home (calgon!) and so, she was "ready." And she was. She always has been, at least as far as the alphabet and multiplication goes.

But the kindergarten teacher warned me that her immaturity might make a difference (her being younger, in some cases by a full year, than her classmates), and because everything we know about kids happens in kindergarten, naturally that teacher was right. (For instance, I am pretty sure it was Ms. Sessions who said I was a "leader" aka "bossy" with "much on my mind" aka "a big mouth" when I was in kindergarten.)

I don't think Bridget has done anything "not nice" on purpose, and I am pretty sure she doesn't even know when "not nice" things are done to her. But I have this regrettable urge to say "which one of my kids did it" when something breaks in the background, so I worry, worry, worry. Is there something I am not seeing? Not doing? Is there any way I can stop any of this from happening at all? 

Today we were watching Made on MTV (don't ask why: alright I will yell you: because Rory loves anything having to do with skateboards) and this girl, who had spent a year sick at home with allergies, had this mom who was so incredibly overbearing, it forced me to go off on one of my useless speeches. I started with "that mom is pretty much waiting for her daughter to fail at skateboarding because she is so worried that she will and that it will hurt and that oh.my.god what if she bleeds or cries or can't do it" and my kids were all oh wait, is mom talking so naturally I kept going (teaching moment! ding ding! ten extra points)... but I will spare you the details.

The point is, I realized that not only was I literally talking to my own damn self, but I was actually talking to myself. So I sat down. I shut up. I listened to what I was thinking. And, with two of my kids, I watched frickin' MTV -- MTV! -- the incubator of my music lust that abandoned me when it opted for girl fights over Art a long, long time ago and which now was making me think about parenting and also, well, um, girl fights. 

I hate it when reality TV serves a purpose. 

So we watched together for a while and then I got up to make dinner. The flame shot up as Bridget walked over. "Watch out," I hurled. "Hot!" I said. 

She looked at me with the same eyeballs she had when she lay on my chest after 36 hours in labor, and she said, Mom. 

Mom, um. Mom? It's not a skateboard.

(And Rory said "it's MY skateboard") (Naturally.)

So Bridget poured a box of organic noodles into a pot and stirred them. Not for the first time mind you, but it felt different this time. And I swear I heard the opening notes of Thriller when she did.

She can fight her own fights.