Well, I'm weird, but I do like physics. After dance today, L was off to her Hunger Games party. We won't see her again until tomorrow evening. R was at baseball practice, and then he had a big history test to study for (which he actually did study for), and T was out for dinner. That left me with some good time alone in the house to exercise, vacuum, clean my floors, get the laundry finished up and balance the checking account. Aaaaahhhhh, NO. None of those things happened. What did happen was physics though, and that was fun!
Do you want to hear something that happened today though that was not a happy moment, more of an appalling in a funny/sad way moment? Every Thursday I take L's old childhood friend and our next door neighbor to dance. Her dance class starts as L's finishes, so the idea is that I'm heading back that way anyway, and her mom works at that time. This girl is a nervous thing, not comfortable with the 20 minute car ride with me. Every week I do my best to make chit-chat, but she immediately pulls out her cell phone and starts texting away. She'll make short little responses to my attempts at conversation, but in general, the conversation dies. So I make a feeble attempt every week, but in general have decided to just be comfortable with silence, the radio, and the clickity-clack of her texting. All this just to say, for 15 she's a bit socially immature.
How can I hold this against her? I was the picture of social immaturity and nervousness well into my adulthood! Well, part of the reason her behavior annoys me though is that even amid my nervousness and awkwardness, I had enough social savvy to know to make conversation with the person I was with, to at least to try to be engaged.
Well, today we drove to dance mostly in silence. The radio played and she clicked away on her cell phone. When we got to dance I walked in with her because I had things L needed to bring to her party. She scooted upstairs to her friends, but was called back down by a mom to try on a costume, where is was revealed that upstairs she had been telling her friends that she ran a marathon at school that day. Umm, what?
My first thought was, she couldn't even have used that as fodder for conversation with me on the awkward car ride here?
But my second thought was...that does not ring true. Now she was in the midst of moms who began questioning her about it. She said it was a voluntary thing, if you signed up for it you were excused from classes for the day, they didn't go around the city, only around the track (104 times!?), and it took 6 hours to complete. She did say she didn't run a lot of it, only walked.
But still... Walking a marathon in 6 hours would require a pace of 4.3 miles per hour, which is a pretty good clip. Keeping that pace up on a treadmill at the gym leaves me in a good sweat after 45 minutes, and this is a girl whose mom picks her up from the bus stop seven doors down from her house! (Well, only when it's raining...now I'm lying!) I don't know if she even owns a pair of running/walking shoes, unless she just bought them for her gym class this year. Plus, to do a 6-hour marathon during a school day would require beginning at 7:30 a.m., as soon as school started, and not finishing until 1:30 p.m., one hour before school ended, with no breaks.
When R got home from baseball tonight, I asked him if there was a group walking a marathon on the track today. Not only had he heard nothing about it, he said his gym class was on the track at 10 a.m. and the only other people out there were from another gym class.
So it was a complete whopper. Of course. This is not the first whopper. She was always a liar as a young kid, but that was usually to get herself out of what she considered a sticky-wicket. It always unnerved us for L's best friend to be a chronic liar, and we did plenty of talking to L about it. But we did understand where the lying came from back then. Back then she lied, but didn't fabricate these complete fish tales.
Now these fish tales are becoming more and more common, to the point that it just gets embarrassing when I talk to her mom. One day she told us her grandfather had been in the hospital for two weeks, and that's why she was possibly going to have to miss a play they had tickets for. She told us she'd suddenly (over the weekend) been diagnosed with a hip problem that needed physical therapy. She told L she had trouble checking on the cat one day when we were out of town because she came down with food poisoning. Some I have seen right through, like the hip problem or the marathon, so I won't create an embarrassing situation by mentioning it to her mom in casual conversation. But I did innocently ask about the food poisoning, and of course I had to ask how her mom's dad was doing in the hospital. (Although I should have figured that one out. Two weeks in a hospital is almost unheard of these days. He would have been in either hospice or a rehab center if he had been that sick.)
So her mom knows. And the lying came up plenty when she was young since she semi-regularly accused L of doing something mean or saying something rude. Sometimes I listened first hand to a situation unfold, and then hear a completely different version when her mother called to confront me about how nasty L had been.
T thinks I need to call the mom and ask about the marathon just to expose the lying again. He's mad about it and just wants justice done. But really, the girl is bordering on mental illness at this point. Really I should expose the lying to her mom again out of compassion, in the hope of getting the problem addressed.
So why am I telling you this? I'm evil, that's why. A part of me has compassion for this kid who just isn't doing well, but another part of me is gloating in her sickness because we have put up with a bit from this family over the years. This girl, while definitely L's oldest friend and, for most of her life, L's best friend, has not been a very good friend at all. She has been hurtful and disloyal. She is the reason I prayed like crazy for God to open new doors of friendship for L, which He did and now she has the ballet gang. (A gang of ballerinas! =) What an image!) But we've also caught whispers of mean things they say behind our back about R, implying he's a bad boy headed for trouble. Just infuriated me when I figured that one out.
But by all appearances we are very friendly with them. We share rides to places and help each other out when we can. The husband loves Oliver and feeds him scraps from their dinner fairly regularly. He also snow-blows our driveway for us sometimes, even when T and R are home to do it. So nice. And a lot of convenient borrowing has gone on in both directions over the years. It's been a good relationship overall.
It's just the kid thing. Their older son dumped D when they were little because a new boy came along who didn't want D around. That hurt and made me mad that they let it happen. But just like L, D went out and made some new friends, much better, healthier friends that he is still close to to this day. Their daughter has certainly not been loyal to L and they let that happen, even though L has been their daughter's good friend all their lives. And they say mean things about R. It's just the kid thing.
Well, I'm all vented. You see, it was good for me to vent because it forced me to remember the good parts of our relationship with this family over the years. Now I truly do have more compassion for this sad, needy girl and can let go of my gloating.
I have to think that it is no coincidence that God has me drive this girl every week to dance all by myself. All this alone time in the car. I've got to pray about a way to make the most of this opportunity and love her through this.
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