Mean Girls Gone Wild

The school year is over and yet the cruel Tactics of Exclusion among the preteen girls continues. The 12 Year Old is now facing the unending stream of information (via text message, Facebook and the old fashioned telephone) about which end-of-year parties she is invited, un-invited or re-invited to. If we could harness the effort this pack of girls expends daily on crushing the hopes of their classmates, we could re-forest the Sahara with enough energy left over to boost the Seattle Mariners to a winning season.

I’m not naive enough to think my daughter is an innocent victim in all of this. Far from it. I suspect she is one of several rival Queen Bees in the hive; she engineers her own problems through gossiping. The 12 Y.O. succumbs to the saccharine allure of gossip so much, she is unable to distinguish school news such as test scores, field trips and assignment due-dates from third and forth-hand sleepover stories about who supposedly let a girl’s older brother tongue kiss them at a sleepover while her bellybutton was being pierced using only an ice cube and a turkey stuffing skewer.

Most of the gossip focuses on which boy Bethany, Brittney or Brianna likes and how Tiffany, Teanna or Tara hates her now because she liked the same boy. The irony is the boys who are the object of the squabble are completely oblivious to any of it. They are focused entirely on food and X-Box. Like cattle who don’t know they are at auction, but contentedly chewing and farting.

I tell the 12 Y.O. to mind her own business, and the other girls will have no ammunition to use against her, but détente is lost on her. Girls practice a ‘scorched earth’ policy to destroy the reputation of another girl if you heard she supposedly said something mean about you during lunch break. There have been more ups and downs on the social rollercoaster this year, it should be a ride at 6 Flags.

My sons I get. I can deal with them. The boys are simple. They are driven by base urges; they act and then it’s over. There is no planning and scheming and plotting. Heck, the 14 Year Old barely plans his next bowel movement.

I’m completely out of my depth. None of my sports aphorisms mean anything to her:

• “You’ve got to step up to the plate”
• “There is no ‘I’ in ‘Team’”
• “You’ve got to keep your eye on the ball”
• “Suck it up and take it one play at a time.”

She just looks at me sadly like I haven’t got a clue.

And she’s right.