It starts early.
My 5-year old daughter had two friends over for a playdate this week. They were upstairs playing with the dress-up box and came traipsing down, all dolled up. One of the girls was wearing a pink boa, sunglasses and a tiara. She looked at me, curled her little lip and said, "Your house isn't very much fun."
Welcome to the world of Pre-Mean Girls.
I labeled it as such because I noticed the phenomenon as early as preschool. Three years old and these girls were already looking around to befriend the girl who had the cutest Dora sandals, only to later withdraw their friendship when a cuter pair of My Little Pony sandals walked by.
And Pre-Mean Girls, like their later incarnations, Middle-Mean Girls and full-fledged MEAN GIRLS, tend to travel in packs of three. A queen bee and two worker bees, both valiantly struggling to be the best friend. And one of them always has the edge, which leaves the third clinging on for dear life, always laughing a bit too loud and trying a bit too hard.
I was the third. And so is my daughter.
At a party a few weeks ago, I saw my daughter running after those two girls. Running. And she was wearing a new pair of jeans that were a little too big for her so she was running and hitching up her pants. Running and hitching. And crying. I felt like I was going to puke.
All those memories came flooding back of me and Deena and Merritt. Yes, those are their real names, but no last names, of course. We must protect the Mean Girls at all costs, musn't we?
Deena was the ringleader. Deena had the coolest bedroom, the most-laid back mother and a father who rode a motorcycle and wore Patchouli. She held a killer seance ("light as a feather, stiff as a board...") and she could make Merritt jump with one sideways glance of her blue eyes.
Me too, apparently, since I was caught shoplifting Bonne Belle Lip Smackers to give Deena as a gift, so that she would like me better than Merritt. This ploy did not work since I was grounded for shoplifting and missed Merritt's birthday sleep-over, which was such an awesome party (including pranks like wet training bras in the freezer; can't get much better than that), that Deena decided that Merritt was her best friend and she didn't need me any more.
So she stopped speaking to me. For a year.
I was devastated. Not only was I cut out of the best seances that the 6th grade had to offer, Deena and I shared a locker and it was heartbreaking and humiliating to share a locker with someone who literally would. not. speak. to. me. I would say things like, "You're really not going to talk to me at all? What did I do?" and she would take her books and walk away.
I used to have fantasies of grabbing her head and drowning her in a basin of Patchouli and then summoning her back at a seance and asking her how Hell was treating her.
And now I'm a Mom and my daughter is running after the Pre-Mean girls and I'm treading very carefully. I don't dare forbid her to play with them, because we all know that will only make her want them more. So I have them over for playdates so I can keep an eye on them and respond to rude statements like the one I mentioned with a big smile and a "Wow. That was really rude." (She did have the sense to blush). And I talk to my daughter about what real friendship is. And I pray. A lot. And last, but not least, I became a Girl Scout troop leader and made a Sisterhood Quilt.
This is my attempt to lessen Pre-Mean Girlism. I walk around those girls, just sniffing for a hint of it, and when I smell that funky odor, I pounce. "That is your Girl Scout sister and you need to treat her with kindness and respect", I fairly hiss. In fact, I think I'm so scary about it, they probably act nice to appease the Crazy Lady. Hey, whatever it takes. The Sisterhood Quilt is a project we did to earn our Be a Sister to Every Girl Scout daisy petal. We paired each girl with another girl they didn't know very well (or didn't like very well), and they had to spend time together interviewing each other and drawing each other with their favorite foods and hobbies. Then, the miraculous Kim screened the pictures onto fabric, edged it and sewed the whole thing together.
Can I single-handedly prevent Pre-Mean Girlism? No. But every time I look at that quilt and see all their names sewn together, I know that I'm trying my best. And maybe, just maybe, my daughter or one of her Girl Scout sisters will figure it out, so that they will decide to NOT share a locker with OR shoplift Bonne Belle Lip Smackers for a Mean Girl.
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