Thursday, November 7, 2019So Generous
If the weather is remotely pleasant, I'm probably walking Mila to the bus stop in the morning. It's not that I don't trust her to make it there; it's that she asks me to walk with her. I'm betting that won't last long, so I'm going to go ahead and enjoy it for as long as it lasts. Or until it starts snowing. Whichever comes first.
That trust thing is only valid in the morning, by the way. If I could meet Mila at school each afternoon to make sure she gets on the correct bus home, I would. She knows which bus she belongs on, but she's obsessed with riding any other bus. I don't know why, she just seems to think other buses hold magical powers and will take her to the land of candy and unicorns. One of these days, she is going to swagger on by the bus monitors and take a ride to some stranger's house. She has already tried convincing her teacher that she's supposed to ride a different bus, a thing which requires a written note, so I got a phone call. Which, how fun is that? Getting a call from the elementary school office with a "Mila says she's supposed to ride bus 200 today. Is that correct?" when you're in the middle of a super important business meeting is SO FUN.
ANYWAY.
I walk with the kid most mornings. And most mornings, I am treated to the sarcasm and judginess that is one of the neighbor kids. She is older, probably in 5th grade, but HOOBOY IS SHE SNARKY BEYOND HER YEARS. Most of her snark is passive-aggressive in nature. For example, the entire school is supposed to wear an anti-bullying t-shirt on the first Tuesday of every month. The neighbor kid will stand at the bus stop and loudly proclaim, "I guess not everyone is smart enough to remember their shirt." She doesn't say it to anyone in particular. She just sort of throws it out in the air so that anyone not wearing the shirt can realize she just called them dumb.
So fun. Or something.
Mila has been on the receiving end of the weirdly passive-aggressive thing a bunch of times, but that girl KNOWS how to handle herself. She is oblivious to passive-aggressive and even more oblivious to judgy, in part because she knows what she wants and doesn't care about other opinions. It's a disease with her, and it's a disease I'm glad she has.
Mila wears cat ear headbands A LOT. She has several pair and she loves them muchly.
I don't much care if she wears them because if you can't wear cat ears to kindergarten, where can you wear them? The neighbor kid cares, though. Every time Mila wears them, she passive-aggressively says something like, "Only babies wear weird animal headbands."
It's ... something.
But every time she says something, EVERY SINGLE TIME, Mila looks at her and instantly replies, "You can borrow my headband if you want! It will make you feel happy!"
It's so perfect.
The Other Reason I Need to Break Up With Halloween
In defense of the Disgruntled Teenager, there was a reason she was being extra EXTRA about Halloween this year - her dance team is full of little jerks.
Yes. I said it. THERE ARE JERKS ON HER TEAM.
Alexis is involved with full-blown competition dance this year, as opposed to competition "light" last year. That means the crazy has ratcheted up a notch. Or ten.
The story begins with a rather fun idea. Our dance studio allows kids to wear costumes to class during Halloween week. That's fun! And a great idea! And for kids like Mila, it's a welcome opportunity to dress up one more time. For the competition teams, though, it's a portal to hell.
Teams tend to do a group costume. There's no requirement to do so. There's no trophy for doing so. It's just a thing that has been happening for a very long time. Which, that's fine. When Alexis was on the competition "light" team, they did a theme every year and it always managed to work out. For example, one year they did puns, which Alexis turned into "Dunkin' Donuts" by wearing a donut pillow around her waist and a basketball jersey for a shirt. It was stuff we had around the house and turned out fantastic. Every year has been like that - the girls have settled on a theme that was either practically free or free and they've made the whole thing nothing but fun.
Welcome to this year. WHEN ALL THE FUN WAS SUCKED OUT.
The discussions about what they should do started in August. AUGUST. We all know I like to start holidays early, but even I rolled my eyes at costume talk in August. But, it turns out that they needed to start that early because the week before Halloween, they still hadn't agreed on one theme, let alone the three that they needed. (They have class three days per week and obviously they can't wear the same costumes more than once. Duh. Three themes it is! ::headdesk::)
There was literal fighting amongst the girls as they tried to figure out a theme. Like, shouting. As in, an adult had to intervene and make it stop. Alexis, of course, had nothing to do with any of it because she was done caring about the whole thing the second it stopped being fun.
What's more, the moms were involved all along.
So what seemed to be happening is that the girls would sort of have an idea and a mom would say "that's not good enough" and kill it. They went through more than a few workable things that ended with an adult intervening. I don't know why. I just know the moms were SUPER involved in the process. One day I had over 150 texts from the group text where the moms were debating what the girls should do. They were talking about spending as much as $50 per costume. TO WEAR TO DANCE CLASS ONCE. CLASS. NOT COMPETITION. CLASS.
Eventually it turned into one mom saying she would make the whole team's costumes for one day and another mom bought the costumes for another day and the third day was "80's girl." I gave somebody $25 and ran away from the whole thing because I was pissed. The girls had no say in any of it and were told what they were going to do.
So one mom made 15 Starbucks costumes. They were a mix of baristas and frappucinos. It was a cute enough idea, but DANCE CLASS. IT WAS FOR CLASS. It doesn't seem like any adult should give up a day of their life to make costumes for a class. By the way, there are no photos of that group costume because the only person who took one was the mom who made the costumes and she didn't bother to get the entire team. ::eyeroll::
The second costume was Day of the Dead, which involved face stickers and wearing all black. It turned out well enough, but it was weirdly high effort. I had to get Alexis to dance 20 minutes early so somebody could slap stickers on her face. That was swell since that day is just one class and she had to be 20 minutes early for one-hour of dancing. Oh, and there were no pictures taken that day either.
The third costume, the "80's girl" one, was the only one that the team seemed to have fun with. There were variations of what that meant, but most slanted towards "80's workout style" which was easy and cute. Alexis wore a bright pink pair of tights, a black leotard, legwarmers, and about seven scrunchies. Nobody had to leave the house to buy anything and nobody crafted anything. There were loooots of pictures taken, but the dance studio didn't post any, which was interesting. They posted lots of Halloween class pics, but none of THAT team. Which ... huh.
And in the midst of that "80's girl" thing, there was another long stretch of group texting between the moms. One of them texted, and I quote, "What exactly does 80's girl mean? I want to make sure *name redacted* is dressed right!"
Dance. Class.
For. Fun.
"Dressed right."
I WILL NOT SURVIVE THIS DANCE MOM THING.
