la vie en rose

Yesterday sucked. Big time.

Last night was Mutual at church, and I was the only leader there with 10 twelve/thirteen year old girls. I knew I was going to be alone, but I thought I could do it. I was really looking forward to what I had planned - we were going to learn about India with some picture books, Bollywood movies, Indian food, and yoga. I went to the library and a specialty Indian store and I printed stuff from the Internet, made all my reminder phone calls and all the girls sounded excited, and I thought, "This is going to be awesome!"

We (meaning me and the Beehives) have had talks in the past about staying on task, being quiet when I talk, not leaving the room whenever they want, not using cell phones at church...all that went out the window from the get-go. We started with me talking about the different religions of India and where yoga comes from and what it is, and everyone had something to say. One gave full plot details of a movie that she saw about an Indian princess. This was after she wouldn't get off the phone with her mom and was being overly dramatic about it. Grr...the frustration was starting. So we started yoga and some girls got it and were being quiet and thinking about what they were doing, some girls were complaining (loudly) that the poses were too hard and others (just as loudly) that they weren't hard enough. After a half an hour of me constantly reminding them to just be quiet already, I figured that it was time for the yoga train wreck to end. I put in some Bollywood musical clips and went down to the kitchen to warm up the samosas (spicy Indian Hot Pockets) and the gulab jamun (little sweet dough balls) with one of the two girls that was actually acting maturely and the other stayed upstairs to keep order.

There was a boy hanging out in the gym who had missed the carpool for the boys' activity and he proceeded to come over to where we were. A couple other girls ended up downstairs with him - a volatile combo. "Vicious flirting" is what I call it. This is when kids of the opposite sex flirt, but they rough house each other. Lots of yelling is involved. (We all did it, but looking back, I have no idea why. It's counterproductive.) The girls kept slamming the door on the boy to keep him out of the kitchen, but then he would get in and grab their phones. The girls thought they were doing the right thing to keep him out of the kitchen, but who gives a crap? Their yelling and door-slamming was way worse than some boy eating our food! I lost it when they were messing around and knocked over a little boy who was there with his mom to pick up one of the girls. Some parents will be getting phone calls.

What made me the most mad and sad was that I put so much effort into this activity and it was all for nothing. I am not a strict person by any means, but obviously my friendliness and happy demeanor has been misconstrued as me being a doormat. Usually I can be very patient with them, and I have an ability to put myself in their shoes and remember what it was like to be a teenager, so I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. But last night they took it too far.