The Captain had a friend over on Friday, and it is amazing how much the addition of a single 11-year-old boy to the household can amplify the noise level. Lest you think this other boy was at fault, I’ll tell you now that the problem is absolutely the Captain. He tends to get very excited when a friend is over, and expresses his excitement through shrieking. In particular, Friday’s play seemed to require the shrieking of the world “BELLBOY” over and over again. Not sure what they were doing down in the Kid Cave*, but clearly it involved a lot of arriving and leaving of hotels.
(* – Our new finished basement, name stolen from Shan’s adorable Lady Cave she’s set up for her daughters.)
Anyway, my point here is that the Captain’s buddy went home after three hours of intense playtime, during which there were exactly zero conflicts or issues or debates. It has happened on occasion that a buddy comes over and they run out of things to do, but then they happily parallel play on their iPods or read and that’s just as cool, it would seem.
Compare and contrast to the life of Little Miss Sunshine. Her life seems to be one ongoing telenovella – el drama de segundo grado – where small dramas cause huge ripples of reaction throughout her entire circle of friends on a daily basis, requiring lots and lots of reaction shots, tears, and sending messages back and forth via a third party. For example, on Thursday her class went skating, and while the Captain would say such a trip was “fine,” the Little Miss comes home with story after story about how SHE wanted to skate with A but A wanted to skate with B and B was too fast so A sat and cried so SHE chased around after B to let her know how A was feeling but B had a new friend in C and then B cried because she felt bad and then SHE went to make A feel better and then they skated together after all.
Seriously, I don’t know how she lives this way, it sounds EXHAUSTING.
I am reminded of a story Sir Monkeypants likes to tell of two girls in his own grade school who were best friends/frenemies. They sat with their desks pushed together most of the time, but on an almost daily basis would have some sort of squabble which would require the dramatic pushing apart of desks (reaction shot), then by the end of the day they’d have made up and moved their desks back together. He holds this up as an example of the craziness of grade school girls (and possibly, all women in general, but he’s too smart to imply that to his adorable and cherished wife). But now that I am seeing it in action, I’m thinking it’s maybe just a way that some girls like to pass the time. Gives them something to do, or perhaps preps them for a life in show business.
Unfortunately, the Little Miss has two rather unsympathetic parents. I was never into drama as a kid, and Gal Smiley has always played with boys at school so has a similar social history to the Captain, so this is all new to me – and I have to admit, it all seems a little silly, if not downright annoying. She is absolutely NOT interested in any practical suggestions or ideas that would remove her from the bondage of Life As A Soap Opera, including things like just walk away and just shrug and say it doesn’t bother you or even never let them see you cry, Evita. It’s what she does.
Heaven help us if she ever gets a blog.
TurtleHead 
Ah, the life of boys. We often have one little guy come over to our house, and if I recall from childhood, the dynamic of having three girls in the same room would inevitably end up with one of them being excluded and the other two being besties. But in this case, three’s a charm. Three boys aged 9 and 10 – total (loud) harmony. Video games, Lego, there’s never an issue. But three girls, well, at the risk of gender-biasing things, it just doesn’t work.
Love this post! Reminds me of my days of bringing up boys and how I’d be so horrified with the literal rough and tumble they’d use to solve an issue… and how afterwards, sometimes immediately afterwards, they’d come in together (dirty and sometimes bruised) to ask for popsicles. While I could never relate to the punching, I learned to just not react – I would end up being upset about it LONG after they were goofing around again, best pals.
And also – there is a grown man equivalent of this that I witnessed many times at the office: yelling behind closed doors, or sometimes in the hallway, followed by beers together at lunch.
Shaking my head. And privately a bit envious, but thank you, God, for giving me boys!
My experience echo’s Nicole’s – I grew up as one of three girls and I swear to THIS DAY there’s always 2 who get along and the third left more or less out in the cold.
Aww cute name!! We had 5 little girls over this weekend for Maya’s party, oh boy was it loud. Relatively little drama though, thankfully.
this sounds all too familiar! the daily girl drama is exhausting…I shudder to think ahead a few years…
Oh Lynn, my 7yo girl will be the END of ME! lol….is it something they teach in school? Was it something in the air we breathe when we were pregnant with them? WHAT is with all the drama?? I too wasn’t a drama queen, in fact, beyond my daily anxieties these days about raising the kids, there was very little drama in my life at all. But my daughter? How do they do this on a regular basis?
lol
Interestingly, her teacher seems to have picked up on this, particularly bec she has a group of girls together who seem to be exactly the way you describe above. It was months ago, and several times to date, that my girl would answer the question how her day at school was with “well we had to meditate”. LOL Seems the drama is alive and well inside the classroom too!