When JoJo was about eight years old I found myself in an unusual situation. Up until this point I never had to worry about babysitters, after school care, or anything else that required someone other than myself to “watch her” for a few hours, or even all day for that matter. There was always a long line of grandparents, neighbors and babysitters waiting to get a call from us. No one wanted to charge either (great, right?) because they all claim that JoJo was so easy and so much fun. I’ll take that. For some reason, though, this summer snuck up on us and I didn’t have a plan.
Where had time gone? It seems like we had moved from an infant to a real life-sized kid overnight. It was terrifying, but also fun to watch and participate in. Her new friends at her new school had really fun mothers and Catholic school is not like any other educational experience; they practically serve alcohol at PTA meetings and their annual fund raiser was a Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday party. It couldn’t be more fun. It’s pretty laid back and completely the opposite of our educational process up until this point. It was there that I overheard someone mention “summer gymnastics camp.” I had never heard of it, but if they were talking about it it must be fun, so I made the ten minute drive to the local gymnastics studio (I use that word loosely) to check it out.
I was underwhelmed on arrival, but I learned a long time ago (approximately eight years earlier) to not judge a book by its cover. This “camp” (again, using the word loosely) would consist of a morning drop-off, a morning tumbling and acrobatics session, a kid-friendly lunch (aka pizza every day), and “advanced” gymnastics and hanging out time in the afternoons. It wasn’t ideal but I could make it work. I was close enough that I could get there in the event that any of the tumbling went wrong. I also had “parent drops in without notice” times planned, and I made sure they knew that I could stop by anytime unannounced. They seemed fine with that, so… this was going to work out. It was only for a few weeks.
What they didn’t tell me, and what is NOT in their brochure, is that this was a little mini training camp and preparation for little girl beauty pageants. It took about one day to realize that I was dropping her off at a camp full of Honey Boo Boos. They all showed up glammed up and blinged up the first morning and every morning after that they all had a new gym outfit on. This camp to them was a way to get their body fat index in check for the swimming suit portion of the Little Miss Mississippi (not sure if there’s such a thing, but there was some gold carrot that they were all aiming for). As the weeks progressed I was very entertained by the mothers who showed up to the gymnastics exhibitions presented by the little tumblers. It was a room full of pageant moms who greatly resembled soccer moms in their appearance and dynamic enthusiasm for the “sport”. The girls were literally doing cartwheels but you would have thought we were at the Olympic games.
All things happen for a reason, and this experience was one of them. I knew that JoJo would look different, act different and respond different from all of the other girls. She’s just wired different. Eight year old girls can be unnecessarily competitive and they aren’t always trained well at home, if you know what I mean. There have been numerous books written and even a couple of movies titled “Mean Girls”. These are the girls who are just that: mean. Although these girls weren’t the worst I’d ever seen, they weren’t friendly to JoJo; they basically ignored her. All except one. There’s always that one girl whose reputation precedes her and this little girl was the one. She was known as the Alpha girl, the camp bully, and the one to be afraid of. She commanded all of the attention and you didn’t cross her in any way. She had a turf there.
About three days into camp, the owner of the gym met me at the door. She asked me to follow her to watch something. The famous mean girl was playing with JoJo. The owner got emotional and told me that she had had issues with this girl every summer and she’d never seen her act kindly toward anyone until she met JoJo. Wow. I was floored. I was only days away from liberating my baby from this horrible experience but I decided after that that people other than me need JoJo. The remaining weeks improved greatly and we ended the summer on a great note.
None of the little girls made it to a pageant except one. The irony of it all was that that next summer JoJo would be a part of the Miss Mississippi Pageant as a Magnolia Princess. She never even learned how to a cartwheel at that camp, and I think she actually gained weight from all of the pizza and snacks. Perfectly acceptable for an eight year old – an adorable eight year old girl.
