I Wanna Slap Somebody

Have I mentioned that I hate other people's kids?

Maybe hate is too strong a word. Although I admit that I do sometimes hate them. "Disinterest" in other people's kids is probably better. There are those I can tolerate, mostly because I like their parents enough to tolerate them. There are some that I like pretty fine because they show signs of eventually amounting to interesting adults. And I've even loved one or two. But then there are those others....

There's a girl in The Child's class. She's an archetype. You all had one in your class, too. She's pretty and shallow. All that is sloshing around in the inch or so of her shallowness is her murky ego. She thinks, as the kids like to say, that she is "all that". And she's mean. Stupid mean. Unnecessarily mean. Mean because she can be. She's followed around by her slavish little minions (this week's word, apparently), who don't really like her but who tolerate her because in their tiny little minds hanging around with her gives them some sort of (questionable) cache.

I hate this simpering little fake of a princess. I'd as soon knock the smirk off her face as look at her.

She's on the volleyball team with The Child and of course, she thinks she's the greatest volleyball player known to humankind. Once upon a time she might have been. However, she is one of Bad Coach's pets. In his mind she can do no wrong, even when she does. If The Child misses a ball he yells at her from the sidelines. If Princess Smirk spikes a ball into the net (which she does with alarming frequency) he laughs. She's gotten very sloppy because Bad Coach doesn't coach. I digress.

Yesterday at practise they were playing against the 7th grade team. A ball was coming at The Child. The standard in volleyball is that if the ball is coming at you and you don't have to move, it's your ball. Another girl played up, however, and hit it instead of letting The Child go for it. Now the girl in question is a perfectly nice kid. I like her fine. I suspect she wasn't playing up for any reason except she saw the ball coming and figured she'd go for it. But after this little incident Princess Smirk apparently yelled, "I don't care if you have to knock her out of the way. Pretend this is football. But GET THAT BALL!"

Bitch.

Not the first time she's displayed that sort of attitude. There are only 2 other people on the team that Princess Smirk doesn't play up on. Because she's an egotistical little creep like that. But because she actually put that attitude into words last night it really wounded The Child.

This morning I gave her a little pep talk. I told her that unfortunately there are always people like that in the world but that the difference between her and Princess Smirk is the fact that The Child, despite some of the rocky and painful things that have happened to her at the hands of other kids, has a good, strong sense of self. I told her that fundamentally Princess Smirk didn't have that kind of confidence because if she did she wouldn't have to act like that. I told her that as long as she believes in herself it doesn't matter what the Princesses of the world do and that, in fact, the reason Princess is like that to her probably owes in some part to her recognizing that The Child does feel good about herself and Princess is jealous. I also mentioned that if you believe in yourself you can do anything and that consequently, unless she gets over her bad self, Princess isn't going to amount to much. (Between you and me, I predict she's knocked up by a football player before she's 21 but I didn't say that to The Child).

All I got from The Child was the requisite "I know". But I hope what I said resonated in some part of her little heart and helped.

Stupid Princess. I want to slap her.