>Mean Girls, Part One of a Zillion

>”Can I play with your daughter?” the little girl on the swing beside us asked at the park the other day.

I’ll admit I had misgivings. Maybe it was the way she was wearing her hair- all down except for a random hank pulled up into a ponytail that sprouted off to one side of her head. She was a pretty girl, but her hair gave her an impish, Pippi Longstocking air. She gave me a lopsided smile and I thought to myself that the girl looked like trouble.

“How old are you?” I asked, studying her.

“Just turned six,” she said proudly.

“Okay,” I relented. “If Punky wants to play, I guess it’s all right with me.”

Of course asking whether or not Punky wanted to play with another girl was like asking Edward Cullen if he liked blood. The two girls exchanged names and eagerly ran off to the park’s gigantic playset. They went down a few slides, climbed on the monkey bars, and then settled down for a strange game that involved shoving handfuls of mulch into a hole in the center of a plastic table.

After a few minutes of this, Punky giggled and shoved her own little pile completely off the table. This upset her new friend.

“That’s not how to play this game!” the girl said, standing up. “If you don’t ‘pology, you can’t be my best friend anymore. And you can’t play with me.”

“But I was just trying to be funny,” Punky said, pouting. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m telling your mommy,” the girl announced. She marched over to me.

“Your daughter isn’t playing the game right,” she said, her chin high in in the air. “She can’t be my best friend anymore unless she ‘pologies. And she is not allowed to play with me.”

I looked over at Punky, sitting alone and confused at the play table.

And then I looked down at that little, funky-ponytailed… brat.

And I understood in that moment why my own mother had embarrassed me more than once as a kid by defending me against bullies and jerks, whether they were mean girls or mean teachers. “You can mess with me,” she’d tell me when I complained that I could take care of it myself, “but don’t you dare mess with my baby.”

“Listen,” I told that kid. “Punky doesn’t want to play with you. Because your game is stupid! And you’re bossy! And she’d rather play alone!” And then I snapped my fingers in her face and turned around and strutted away while she burst into tears of remorse.

Okay, okay. Hold your fire. I may have thought those things, but don’t worry. I didn’t say them.

“Maybe you guys should play alone for a little while,” I suggested instead.

And that’s what they did.

It wasn’t long, though, before little Hank-o-Hair was calling Punky’s name from across the playground. “Are you sure you want to play with her?” I asked her. “You can play with Bruiser instead, you know.”

“I know,” she said thoughtfully, “but she really seems to like me. She’s calling my name.”

As I watched them play together (very closely, I might add), I realized that Punky had reached the Mean Girls Milestone. From now on, she’ll periodically have to put up with girls who make fun of her and girls who don’t invite her to their spend the night parties and later, girls who steal her boyfriends and girls who spread horrible rumors about her at school. It happened to me, it happened to you, and it undoubtedly will happen to our daughters.

After years of saying nothing, I have finally learned to stand up to women who are mean to me for no reason. That was hard. And now I have to learn to say nothing again, so that my daughter can figure out how to handle the Mean Girls on her own.

There are times, though, when I won’t be able to resist stepping in. I just know it. I am my mother’s daughter, after all. And you can mess with me… but don’t you dare mess with my baby.