Eighth Grade Cyber-Balderdash

Well, it finally happened.  Elizabeth has been attending school for 10 years including pre-K and this is the first time we’ve encountered cyber-bullying that is intense enough to get us involved.  It happened on Formspring, which for 8^th graders is like glazed donuts to a diabetic; irresistible but deadly.  Formspring isn’t like Facebook.  On Formspring, anyone can leave anonymous posts unless you've tweaked your account to prevent it (and most folks don’t know it’s possible).  On Facebook, everyone knows who you are, so haters leave major insults at their own risk, which means, most of the time they don’t bother.

I was first introduced to Formspring by a high school age student we know in Connecticut.  She is a Facebook friend who posts links to her Formspring dialogue regularly.   It is disturbing.  Boys ask for a blow job, and she LOL’s.  Girls call her slut, whore, and douchebag, and she LOL’s that, too.  We mentioned what was going on to her mother and haven’t heard from her mom since. I guess when she said, “Let me know what’s happening online”, she didn’t really mean it.

Formspring Sucks!

Elizabeth is attending 8^th grade in a school that is 85 percent Asian.  So, on top of the usual 8^th grade dramatics, she takes considerable flack for being white.  Ironically, she NEVER takes any abuse for having two moms.  She’s been accused of trying to act Asian, dress Asian, and taking Asian boys away from Asian girls.  This is a lame insult, if you know Elizabeth.  She is extremely sensitive to any kind of racism, and doesn’t hesitate to get in our faces if even remotely Archie Bunker-like words slip from our lips.  Have you ever been lectured by a 13 year old?

Last night, someone posted a verbal assault on Elizabeth's Formspring profile. By 8^th grade standards, it was epic. Elizabeth discovered it just before climbing into bed, and she was devastated.   The hater covered her breasts, her body type, her sense of humor (how she paints a mustache on her finger and holds it under her nose), her standards of friendship, personality, and then capped on her for hanging out with another group of kids who reported hate her now, too.  Of course, she was also accused, once again, of wanting to be and acting like ... yes, you guessed it, an Asian.

Leslie and I went to bed upset.  Eighth grade is hard enough.  The teachers are mean as hell, as if being so was a prerequisite to teaching.  The ones that aren’t mean are lazy.  And a goodly number of them take any opportunity to yell at and insult classroom students.  Hey folks, we realize this hasn’t been a banner year for State of California education, but what made you decide to leave your maturity at the door?  Many of these individuals seem to forget that teaching is more than a job.   Remember, these are the teachers who’ve kept their position when so many others are let go, implying they have tenure or are the cream of the crop.  You would think so, anyhow.

Leslie and I slept on it, and we started our morning as usual.  Despite being recently laid off, I get up early, which is what they say avoids the gaping maw of unemployment depression.  Elizabeth was quiet.  She had to be at school 45 minutes early for detention because she was off sick on Friday, and didn’t get her political cartoon assignment.  Whatever.   See what I’m saying about mean? 

Well, we are certain we know who the hater is.  This girl, an Asian girl, hung out with Elizabeth for two years before blossoming (and bludgeoning) hormones and other girly shit split them up.  My guess is that when they split, Elizabeth was supposed to go crawling back, and one might say she did the first time they had a problem.  She opted to be the bigger person and broke the ice.  The second time, however, Elizabeth had enough, opted in favor of her self-esteem, and found new friends.

I am personally very familiar with this hater’s M.O.  I was the buck-toothed, red-head fifth grader who got her ass kicked regularly after school.  Girls in 7^th grade handed me notes about how ugly I was and how I smelled bad.  I had a girlfriend in school, and she did the same thing to me.  She had an expectation of my behavior when we argued and when I didn’t comply, she let me have it.  I know all about it, but I didn’t have supportive parents backing me up.

Elizabeth does have supportive parents, and when I spoke to the school principal today he was very concerned.  We’re going to deal with this assertively.

It’s not okay for anyone to pick on our little girl.

Watch out, haters.

EIGHTH GRADE TIME MACHINE

Back to School


Our daughter started her first day of eighth grade last Monday. She got up super early to be at her girlfriend’s house so they could walk up the hill to school together.

Elizabeth, or Liz as she calls herself, is at the top of the heap now in middle school, no longer a Taylor Tot or suspended someplace in the middle of seventh grade. She’s one of those girls she found herself looking up to not even a year ago, poised to enjoy a year full of special events that no one else gets -- a trip to Great America, a special graduation dance, a yearbook with her name embossed on it, and of course the sacred ceremony itself. Eighth grade girls are spoken of in hushed tones, like “He’s dating an eighth grade girl,” or “I’ve been friended on Facebook by an eighth grader!” Elizabeth will have braces by December, too. Maybe even green ones, although when I was a kid we didn’t get to pick cool colors. The fact that she’s actually looking forward to getting them, like they’re a right of passage, blows my mind.

Elizabeth has so much to look forward to, so much to be … so much pressure.

I knew we were approaching a rocky spot this past weekend when by Thursday Elizabeth juggled both her computer and iPhone almost religiously to connect with her best friend, Jessica. Their need to reaffirm their friendship before school started seemed manic. Friday morning, she announced a “Stay at Home Day”, the last of the summer, and she simply refused to go anywhere. Liz glued herself to her technology, as she and Jessica shared an obsession over a gaming site called OMGpop, and their constantly competitive interaction increased their tension. At one point, Elizabeth exclaimed with glee that they were addicted! Yay!

Time For An Intervention

Despite Elizabeth wanting to spend time with Jessica in person over the weekend, Leslie and I gently declared a no friend zone and instead intended to bask our daughter in the healing, inner warmth of our tight family. Saturday would be about shopping, one of Elizabeth’s favorite activities, and the list of errands to complete and prepare for Monday. We shopped for clothes, shoes, and school supplies (which, by the way, cost a fortune no matter where you get them).

While we were out, Elizabeth maintained the link with Jessica over her iPhone. In real time, she vacillated between reluctant cooperation, exasperated impatience, and then downright irritation with Leslie and I. Each time she got too snippy, she heard about it, and soon it became obvious we were cramping her style.

After a slightly tense dinner of chinese food, we ended up at a brand new Van’s shoe store on Burlingame Avenue. It had just opened the day before, was fully stocked, and the sales boy seemed eager to please. That was a good thing because Elizabeth is notoriously difficult to fit. After being a size eight and a half for the last year and a half, Elizabeth declared that she was only seven and a half, and thus began a tug ‘o war around shoe size.

While Elizabeth and Leslie negotiated, I captured a few private and precious moments with Elizabeth’s iPhone to look at the latest string of text messages. I’m not concerned with violating her privacy. It wasn’t her diary, and I didn’t find it under the mattress. Elizabeth knows we claim the right to review her activity on the internet, although she refers to it as stalking. These are children using futuristic communication devices that encourage and enable disrespectful attitudes by eliminating the need for personal contact. Reports of internet bashing, bullying, and inappropriate teenage behavior whirled through my head, as some of the comments I’d previously read written by Jessica when she was irritated with her mother flashed before my eyes. Indeed, hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, I was enormously relieved to see that Leslie and I had been however irritatingly, but still only, referred to as “those people”.

I heaved an enormous sigh.

We were not “those jerks” or worse as some other children have called their parents. No. Elizabeth referred to us as “my moms” (which we are) and “those people”, as in, “I can’t get away from those people” (which I don’t mind). She complained we were finding fault with everything she did, and, I suppose, from her limited perspective, we were.

Eighth Grade Time Machine

Eighth grade was a blur for me. My brothers and I lived with my mother in a pretty little rental in Milford, Connecticut, but the front door revolved in a long series of freaks and weirdo’s. These were people my mother considered friends, but who, at any point in my life, I would consider a roster of the lowest form of barely vegetative life forms available on the Milford bar scene. The all night parties complete with band, open use of drugs and alcohol, people asleep on the couch, floors and showing up in bedrooms, punctuated by the occasional conflict between inebriated scumbags was a frightening parade of on-going craziness. You wouldn’t believe the completely inappropriate scenes I walked in on, and god only knows what my brothers were exposed to. I was frequently stunned, to say the least. My immediate family was no safe haven, and my mother’s behavior became a source of confusion. While there was a guardian angel that kept me focused on constructive activities, my mother showed no interest in what I was doing, and so at this point I started leaning heavily on my friends for emotional support and got out of the house every chance I could get.

Leslie, on the other hand, was a different kind of kid. She was in seventh grade in 1964, and her mother had gone away for a long medical convalescence. Leslie was left with her father, who worked in show business, to fend for herself. Her older sister had long since flown the coup. Leslie was a private child who didn’t share her problems and never strayed from her family.

* * * * *

For us, Sunday was, quite deliberately, a lovely, peaceful day. Elizabeth and I organized her dresser, her closet, and all her school supplies, and the process made her very happy. She spent only one hour on the computer at the very end of the day, which found Leslie and I speculative.

Our family approached a nuclear meltdown more than once over the weekend. Elizabeth teetered on a high wire of tension, brought on by eighth grade expectations, and Leslie and I were her safety net, guiding her. I found myself wondering what would happen if that safety net disappeared? How would our daughter fare if we weren’t there to guide her? Would she be like I was, needful of people and activities? Or would she be like Leslie who was private and self-sufficient? I’m happy that her biggest worry revolves around when she can visit with her friends after school instead of focusing so intently on homework.

Elizabeth is an uncanny combination of both Leslie and I, and if you’re familiar with how she was conceived, you’ll see the irony in this. She can be flighty and forgetful one moment, and then incredibly focused, attentive, and connected the next. At school, she manages to juggle a complex social network of friends, which extends across the internet, and still she gets good grades. We just received the results of last year’s California STAR testing, and her marks were outstanding.

All speculation aside, I got the reassurance I needed from Elizabeth’s text messages. Yes, she is poised however precariously on the brink of being a teenager, like most kids her age, and believe me, Leslie and I get on her nerves regularly.

But we're confident she’s holding her own.

Note: Photography by ellSNAP Designs (aka Elizabeth Leslie Faber).