You Want the Drama? You Can't Handle the Drama!

I guess I asked for it. Well, technically, you requested this blog entry. But when I asked you all whether you'd prefer me to write a hotel review or a story about teen angst, I really should have known what you'd say. In fact, your answer should have been so predictable that posing the question was unnecessary. Well... it was. Anyway...

This drama involves four girls... my kid, neighbor girl, Beth and Violet, and it pretty much revolves around Violet. You see, Violet is what you'd call a drama queen. This most recent round of teen angst all started when my kid broke up with her boyfriend Ken. Ken and my kid dated for over a year, surviving a couple of mini-breakups along the way. I was initially impressed at how well they handled the split... even managing to remain cordial with one-another and not badmouthing to their friends. Enter Violet...

Somewhere along the line, a little sexual tension developed between Ken and Violet. This kind of makes sense to me, because Violet has certain mannerisms about her. To put it as delicately and tactfully as I possibly can, she acts like a classless little slut around boys. She bats her eyelashes, tosses her hair, twirls her gum around her finger, invades personal space and so forth. It should come as no surprise that horny little teenage boys would be attracted to this kind of behavior.

When my kid found out about the flirting, she was realistic enough to acknowledge that she was uncomfortable at the prospect of her friend dating her ex; she let them both know her discomfort, and they said that there was nothing going on, that they had no plans to date, and that they would honor her request. Despite this, my kid, neighbor girl, Beth, neighbor girl's parents, Mrs. Evan and I all suspected that these two would probably end up dating. We were right. We just couldn't predict how things would unfold...

The girls all decided to skip this year's Sadie Hawkins dance and have a party at neighbor girl's house. The day of the party, Violet said that she was grounded and couldn't go to the party. During the party, my kid, neighbor kid, and Beth found out that Violet wasn't grounded, she went to Sadie Hawkins with Ken.

But wait... it gets better. Violet had the audacity to show up at neighbor girl's party later that night... she said that her parents let her come over after all, trying to play things off as if nothing had happened. When she was called on her deceit, Violet became hysterical, crying and screaming stuff like "I can't help it if I'm the pretty one! I can't help it if nobody wants to date you and everyone wants to be with me!" By the way, nobody in this story has really discussed who the pretty one is, but we have unanimously agreed that it's not Violet.

After this drama, neighbor parents, Mrs. Evan and I all recommended that my kid, neighbor girl and Beth all let this thing go. Just ignore Violet... at least until this round of drama dies down. Of course they were all pissed at Violet; they acknowledged our advice but said they weren't going to follow it. Understandable. After all, they are teenage girls.

For the next couple of weeks, there were many snide comments left on Violet's facebook profile. Violet tried to make herself look like the mature one, and to come across as a victim of petty action on the parts of my kid, neighbor girl and Beth, but her story was inconsistent enough that it was relatively completely unbelievable.

Fast-forward a bit, to a day when Violet actually posted pictures of her in the shower on her facebook profile. The pictures didn't show any nudity, but they were provocative enough that she looked downright trampy... especially considering that she's not an adult. As soon as the pictures were posted, the claws came out, and the other girls started tossing unbecoming words around her facebook profile. The most frequently-used word rhymes with 'nut.' The shower photos were pulled from Violet's profile faster than... well, it was really fast. Once again, neighbor parents, Mrs. Evan and I recommended that the girls let things die, and the kids again politely disregarded our sage advice.

Circumstances, however, actually forced the kids to stop for a while. Neighbor family and the family of Evan went on a mini-vacation, and we brought Beth. The kids were all kind of catty amongst themselves about Violet, but they had no communication with Violet during this vacation. Apparently though, Violet didn't like the lack of attention. While we were on vacation, she spent a couple of hours deleting from facebook any negative comments she had written (whether on her profile, my kid's, neighbor girl's or Beth's profile), and removed any provocative photos of her from her profile, and then went to her parents, claiming that the other three were forming a hate club against her. The parents then called Beth's parents to complain. Beth's parents got involved, logging on to Beth's facebook account and changing the password so that she was locked out of her own facebook profile, and they called beth while we were on our mini-vacation to yell at her about the whole thing. Beth, of course, was very distressed.

I might also add that Violet's parents never called neighbor parents or us about any of this... they didn't even leave a message on our phones while we were on vacation. I have some theories about why they didn't call us, but that's beyond the scope of this story.

Hopefully, the kids are ready to let this die. Ideally, they're ready to cut off any ties with Violet. This story is really one story in a long pattern of behavior.

We did get a standing inside joke out of the whole thing though. Whenever someone had a WTF moment (Damn, I can't believe I did such-and-such) someone else would throw in a "That's okay. You can get away with it when you're the pretty one."