Winter formal Junior year. It started slowly as it usually does. We had several months to prepare and of course it started with the who. Oldest twin lined up something with a friend of hers on the basketball team. She says he’s not her boyfriend, she says she’s not “interviewing” him, we shall see. Other daughter, currently with a guy, cute enough, knows how to act, but seems to be yet another insecure guy who takes some sort of twisted pleasure out of controlling his girlfriends and breaking up with them every ten minutes so they beg their way back, twisted. Anyway, this is HER date. Then just to add interest one of the girls’ friends who doesn’t have a date goes along with them. Winter formal Drama prelude.
Why it always seems to happen that these dances fall on nights we have the girls I do not know, but they seem to always do that. The difficult thing for the girls’ Mother is that she is removed from the preparation and hub bub. I’m not sure by missing out on the hub bub she’s really disadvantaged, yet I do try to understand how she must feel. On the other hand I struggle with keeping up with everything for two girls… that’s never easy. Then of course we always end up bearing the brunt of the expense, which is difficult for us.
Now granted, I only know this story as it unfolded on this end. One sided. I only know what the girls tell me and I don’t know what their Mother actually says and I can guess that our girls aren’t as shiny as they present themselves while all this with their Mother goes down.
Next, we have the drama of the dresses. For some reason a lot of the girls had the notion that they were going to wear one dress to the formal then change to a different dress for wherever they went next. Ok so our oldest twin girl, the planner, found a dress on line, we were only springing for one, then somehow convinced her Mother to get her the other one. Our youngest twin daughter, the what’s a plan-ner a couple of weeks later asks her Mother about getting her a dress and was told she had already bought one for her sister. Well guess what, so had we. So one daughter has two dresses and the other has none. You see where we’re headed. We took care of that one, their Mother was made aware of the situation, our slightly greedy daughter reimbursed her Mother for the dress she bought so her Mother was then willing to buy her sister a dress, which had been the agreement all along. The dresses arrive. They are pretty and pretty short. The shoes then that they got were very very high heeled and would probably be worn a sum total of 10 minutes. Winter formal 2013 Drama…act one.
Then we go quite a while before the rest of the preparation begins. Older girl decides she needs a tan and nearly burns herself silly in a tan booth. The other decides she is happy with her porcelain white skin. Just like last year, about 2 days prior to the dance our tan daughter remembers that she hasn’t arranged for a boutonnière. Swell. Naturally neither had our what’s a plan-ner. We talk about it and this is Thursday night prior to the dance on Saturday. I hear myself offering to take care of it, dad gummit! Well heck I go in to work that next day and while I thought about it on the drive in and thought man I’d better call my florist first thing, I got in and got busy and plum forgot. Just past noon if you listened carefully you would have heard an oh (@&a!!!!! come from my office. I called my florist and said that I was sure I’d caused the already impossible to become more so but told her what I needed. They took my order and saved the day. They would have them ready by noon Sat. Whew. Oh and more $$. Then we get all the way to the morning of the dance before the blow ups occur. I go downstairs that morning quite innocently to make coffee and fix breakfast for our little guy and the girls are in a discussion about dinner and dance plans. One had them, the other didn’t. So I asked, foolishly I guess, what’s the plan girls? The planner lays it all out, pictures with a group of friends at 5pm, dinner then the dance is at 8pm. I looked at our other daughter, the what’s a plan-ner and she says she doesn’t know. She did say she had made hair appointments for both she and her sister for mid day. Aw that was nice….and yet more $$$$. Then the other sister relays that she has made nail appointments for both of them…aw that’s nice too..even more $$$$. I ask again at about 1pm what daughter #2’s plans are and she was still working on it. In the meantime, the planner told me that their Mother had asked them to come over to her place. That didn’t surprise me, I mean I’m sure she at least wanted to see them all done up. I got the feeling our daughter was trying to figure out exactly when she was supposed to do that. So she and her Mother get into some sort of texting feud and then next thing you know of course, their Mother is mad. Our daughter had asked her if she wanted to go with them to get their nails done, their Mother told her she didn’t need her nails done. Ick. Apparently there was no discussion about their Mother going to where they were having pictures taken like she had at the prom last year. It appeared their Mother was feeling left out and was pretty angry about it. Our daughters acted as if their Mother was being the most unreasonable and childish person ever. And although I thought it too bad that again, their Mother’s feelings unfortunately had to become the focus of their day, I tempered that realizing that the girls had probably left their Mother completely in the dark as to how things were developing for their evening till the 11th hour. I was cutting her a little slack. Clearly she was upset, more text war ensued and the end result of it all was I’m sure their Mother spent the remainder of the evening with hurt feelings and I know that once again, the girls focus couldn’t help but shift to their Mother throughout the night when they should have been just having a good time. Unfortunate. Winter formal drama 2013 act two.
Late afternoon, the hair looks lovely, the nails look lovely and just prior to their quirky yet likeable girlfriend coming over, youngest twin, what’s a plan-ner says to me…what time should (insert date’s name here) and his parents come over for pictures? Huh? So I have a toddler’s birthday party to take our boy to and my husband has a house to show and she asked when do you think we should go to dinner at the last minute. I’m thinking what the heck are you asking me for, but I help her work backward from the time of the dance and we come up with pictures at 6pm and dinner at 7pm. So I scurry around straightening the house, vacuuming etc. I’d hate the girls to mess up their manis and hair after all, then I go to the birthday party and afterwards as I pull up home, one daughter and her date (seems a nice lad) pass us in the driveway. I tell them how great they look, off they go. We enter the house and there is perfume in the air and clothes and curlers flying!!!! Husband’s still gone and I’m praying the camera cooperates when the other date arrives…I’ll call him trouble because that’s what he’s turned out to be. He, his sister, her two friends, his Mother and his Father come in. Over kill? Yeah, I’d say so. So we make nice, our other daughter and her date come back…pictures all around. I pinned boutonnières on the guys. They all left. I assumed both guys were driving the girls to dinner and to the dance. Winter formal drama 2013 act three.
I get a phone call about an hour or so later and learned that an old friend of mine had passed away. I hadn’t been close to him in recent years and last time I’d seen him was at his retirement dinner where I showed up with my new son, more a show of respect and old friendship than anything; still to hear of his passing made me sad. Right then, all these kids show back up. Apparently they couldn’t get served at the place they had reservations, so they got fast food then had time to kill before the dance so came home. Yeah. I should be grateful they came home instead of out getting into trouble, I know. But I’m emotional, they all get in on that but it did lighten my mood; they blow in they blow out. At this point I have to back up and say that the boyfriend of our youngest twin, while a good looking kid and totally able to turn on the charm at will, has emotional problems (he discussed this with our daughter) turns out not the least of which is deep rooted insecurity and a fondness for playing emotional hostage games with girls. Having broken up and re-united with her more than once…many tearful nights for our daughter…I had started not to be a fan prior to this night. She said as she was talking to her girlfriend earlier in the afternoon that day, that she feared he’d comee up with some reason to get jealous or mad and try to ruin the evening, as it turns out, can she call it or what? Act four.
I get the call at about 9pm. He got mad at her she says, broke up with her publicly, walked out on her at the dance. My first question was are you alright. Yes she said. My second question was do you need a ride home, then. My girl says no, I drove my own car. Huh, interesting. I told her I felt she was better off, that it was better for her if breaking up was his idea, to let him go. I told her to have a good time for the rest of the dance and I’d see her later. Agreed. I felt in my bones we hadn’t heard the last of him, though. Winter formal drama 2013 act five.
I get up Sunday morning and as I am with our little one in his room, our girl tells me about the rest of the night. She says she was the recipient of multiple texts and calls from this guy, his Mother (yes, his Mother!) his sister….calling her names, accusing her of ruining their boy’s life…using him…only thinking of herself…dancing with other guys…you name it. It was the most ridiculous behavior from a Senior boy and his family that I have ever heard of, absolutely beyond reason. I put my husband on alert as to what was happening. He very wisely insisted she give him all their cell numbers. In this way if he felt it was necessary, he would block their numbers from her phone. He instructed her what to tell them, then if they persisted, he had to do what he had to do. This idiotic behavior continued into the late afternoon of the day after the dance. They even laid on her that he became suicidal, that it was her fault and she had to help them….good lord. Winter formal drama 2013 prelude to the finish!
In the meantime one of our daughters said your know what. Christy, today’s Mom’s birthday. It is…I said….boy it’s too bad you guys are on the outs. A little later they did exactly as they should have done. They went out, bought her some little things and although she wasn’t home, they put cards and candy hearts, flowers and a picture of the three of them in her kitchen wishing her a Happy Birthday; an effort to make amends. They showed me a picture of it all as they told me what they’d done. I said you know, I just know she’s going to really appreciate what you did, she later called, and she did really appreciate the gesture. Good for them! They’re learning! Winter formal drama 2013 Finis.
Lessons learned
If you have teenaged girls, you might consider a ban on dancing altogether.
Even though sometimes its hard to understand all of the reasons why the kids’ Mother does the things she does, some of it is easy to understand if you just think about it. It helps if you don’t take advantage of these situations by playing up you’re the good guy and their Mother is the bad guy. Hear the kids out and try to help but at the same time, get their Mom’s back as much as you can. One day she might get yours.
Adults need to be adults. At times I do believe the girls’ Mother shows immaturity. Why do these dances ALWAYS have to end up being about her having hurt feelings? Just once it would be nice if that weren’t the case.
Sometimes your kid’s will be in a no-win situation and it’s hard to watch.
Being the hub house is cool, but it ain’t easy!
Girls often chose broken boys. I guess we want to fix them. I don’t know why we do it. It’s almost never a good thing. Like in my time, so it goes on.
Parents have no business in the relationships of their children. Dear Lord.
Sometimes you have to step in. If your child is in over his or her head, call it and step in.
If you stand back and watch and if you’re lucky…if you’re kids have been paying attention..they’ll do the right thing. It’s very gratifying when that happens!
Good StepMom
