High School Drama Department

Ah, don't you just love small town politics? In a town like ours, fairly affluent, fairly educated, they are particularly ____________. (Insert adjective of your choice: entertaining, frustrating, bewildering, or my recommendation: frrrrrrrkin' mind-blowing.) 

Right now, there's a major storm brewing at my daughter's high school. The relatively new principal (it's January; he started in September) is proposing to take away science labs, increase class length, decrease "passing time" in between classes, and change the tech and arts graduation requirements.

Many parents and faculty have issues with all this. How will our children compete in college admissions for science-related courses of study? Can a student who doesn't test well but shines in practical exercises still succeed? Don't AP science students have a minimum lab requirement or else they can't take the test? (News to me.) And, perhaps most important ...

When (oh when) will our children go to the bathroom?

Seriously, most teachers won't let kids leave during class. They (the kids — teachers too, maybe) are expected to use the facilities during passing time. But, with about 1,080 students and 89 faculty and 15 bathrooms and 3 minutes ... well, you do the math.

It isn't funny. 

Well, not really anyway. 

But it is really, really the most exciting, contentious, dramatic thing that my daughter and her peers have dealt with this year. (Except, of course, for the infamous sports bra incident in November.)

Yesterday, the principal met with all the students, divided into four separate sessions throughout the day. This morning, he presented his plans to about 120 parents, including my husband. Tonight, there will be even more (I'll be there myself with my daughter).

Did I use the word "dramatic?" This is drama. And, the kids are jumping right in.

When my daughter got home yesterday afternoon, we were treated to a line-by-line reenactment of the meeting she had been to. Supposedly the principal didn't treat the kids with much respect. In his defense, they apparently didn't treat him with much either. I don't agree with his plans (or his approach to communicating them; from what I've heard there's a bit of a "my way or the highway" attitude). But, I do think that children, even teenagers — wait, especially teenagers, need to be polite and respectful of their elders, educators and authority figures. As you can imagine, the hashtags, Instagrams and memes circulating this morning are pretty brutal.

On the flipside, I'm proud of my daughter for standing up for her beliefs (hopefully in a respectful manner). In fact, I'm rather floored that a girl who finds it difficult to sit at a cafeteria table with kids she doesn't know, was willing to ask some tough and informed questions of her principal. I want her to take an active role in her education. I want her to push back. I want her to demand her rights. Yes, at times I even want her to "stick it to the man." 

Just not in those words, okay?

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Drama Majors

Babies may cry a lot. Toddlers may tantrum. Elderly people may cherish bittersweet memories of happier days. But, for pure, unadulterated drama, nothing beats the tweens.

This isn't new.

When I was a tween, my favorite movie was Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. The first time I saw it, it was as though I suddenly understood the entirety of the human condition. We were here to love — not wisely, but too well. (All right, wrong play, I know, but relevant, don't you think?) Parents, community, life, religion, duty. Nothing meant anything in the face of star-crossed romance. To die for love? It was an honor that I dreamed not of!

It was the 70s. I had a poster from the movie over my bed. I read and re-read the play hundreds (maybe thousands) of times. I had an 8-LP set of the entire film's audio, which I had miraculously found — on sale — in the movie soundtrack department of Sam Goody on Lexington and 44th Street. I played it alone in my room over and over and over. This was before VCRs were common; I can't imagine the rivers of ecstatic tears I might have shed had I been able to actually watch the movie on a daily basis. I was distraught when my school ID was stolen (along with my Frye leather wallet and about $4 in cash) because people had told me I looked like Olivia Hussey in the picture.

To this day, just mention Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet? Deep sigh.

A couple of years ago, I tried to get my tween to watch the movie with me (yes, gentle reader, I now have my very own copy — such exquisite sorrow, such bliss!). It was one of those mother-daughter events I had looked forward to. We would curl up on the sofa with snacks and a big box of Kleenex. Obviously, there would be no boys allowed.

We started the movie, but my daughter isn't dumb. She figured out pretty quickly that we weren't in for a happy ending. "It's too sad!" she protested. I think we may have barely reached the point where Mercutio dies. It was not Shakespeare's ending, but it was definitely ours. I put the movie away for another day.

Now, a couple of years later, my daughter is caught up in her own tween tragedies. Mean girls at lunch, having to wear glasses to see the white boards in class, the loss of a favorite pony at her stable. Countless events like these, large and small, drive her to tears on a pretty regular basis.

My husband is perpetually bewildered by it. Me? I try to help. Operative word: try.

There's a distinct chemical reaction that occurs in the body and soul of a mother when we hear our baby's cry. Pulses and blood pressures increase; we are physically as well as emotionally compelled into action. This doesn't completely go away just because they don't need us for basic human survival anymore. My daughter's tears (even when my decisions — "No cell phone for a week," "No riding tonight," "No Facebook forever" — have caused them) still drive me to distraction.

We talk through whatever has happened. I give advice. I work to instill resilience. I encourage her to take control of her own reactions when she can't control the actions of others. My success is well ... not very successful. But, at least she comes to me with her woes so some part of her must still think I have the resources to comfort.

And, I have to remind myself that part of being that age is feeling, feeling oh-so intensely. She is making sense of the world and plotting her own course as the heroine in it. Boredom is the enemy. Experiencing emotion, even painful emotion, even godawful, blubbering, heartbreaking emotion, keeps her in her own spotlight.

In truth, we have been blessed with very little actual tragedy in our family to date. So, my daughter (like myself before her) has to create or at least nurture what poignant sadness she can. Sometimes I can help her see perspective or even a touch of humor in a situation. Sometimes I can help her stop crying. But, sometimes — and, this is precisely what my husband does not get — she just needs to cry.

Because, never was a tale of such woe, as a tween who simply has to let it go.