Primary Park Drama (continued)

7/10/12

We may be reaching a point where this conflict is too much, but it’s too hard to look away. First, today was Halloween in July, which is probably the worst thing we do at Primary Park. It’s always a disaster. To relate it to this, Olivia had a pretty cool costume: she was dressed as one of the girls from “Grease.” Now to the good stuff...for yesterday and the first half of today it appeared that there was a truce called by Olivia and Stephanie; they definitely did their best to prove me wrong. I should know by now that the problems don’t start till lunch time. 

So the Blue Tsunamis were in their lunch line and I was chilling at the head of the line with Stephanie being the line leader. Quick side note: do you remember “cutting” when we were kids? Cutting is probably the worst thing that a six or seven year old can do. It’s like committing a capital crime and it starts a lot of scuffles. Well, anyway, Stephanie turns around and asks Olivia, a few people away, if they are friends now; Olivia says nothing and gives a quick glance away. This is where the trouble starts. After a minute or so Olivia comes up to me and the other Blue Tsunami counselor and tells us not to tell Stephanie, but they aren’t really friends. Stephanie starts getting mad because she thinks Olivia is telling secrets. Then they get into a brief argument about if the movie’s name is Grease or not. 

We get to lunch and there is some drama, not too much. Olivia did go around to the few people around her and asked if they didn’t like Stephanie. The whole lunch period Stephanie was giving her daggers. The only other interesting thing was when Stephanie was walking past Olivia she held up her hand like she was telling Olivia to “talk to the hand.” Olivia wasn’t a fan of this and she came up to me to tell me and to also remind me that Stephanie is “horrible.” I guess they were saving all their energy for outside time...

Our first activity after lunch today was outside time, and did the claws ever come out. I missed the first part of it, but apparently Olivia was on this other part of the playground with a bunch of the girls and she went up to each girl to say they were invited to her birthday party and when she got to Stephanie she said she wasn’t invited. Clearly Stephanie wasn’t happy with this and she told Olivia: “I invited you to mine, so you have to invite me to yours. That’s how it works.” Olivia said it didn’t matter because she didn’t go to Stephanie’s party because her great aunt is 99 (I don’t know if she died, she didn’t elaborate). Stephanie responded by saying that it didn’t matter. 

They started to get a bit violent today; they were pushing each other A LOT. For a long stretch they chased each other around the playground. After a few laps Olivia came back and told the other girls that Stephanie is a “poopyhead” (which got a way better reaction then I thought it would; the girls were eating it up). I forget what led up to this part but Stephanie and Olivia were arguing about who knows what and it ended with Stephanie saying something like, “ok, like, go die now.” Olivia and Stephanie were having a bit of shoving match and I had to be like a Jerry Springer bodyguard for a lot of it. 

They did their chasing thing again and I’m watching them, to make sure no one got hurt. At one point Olivia was running up these stairs and Stephanie was at the top and she stuck her arm out like she was going to push Olivia. After a few seconds Olivia comes running back with a huge smile on her face and she tells me that Stephanie said that she was going to keep pushing her until she fell and died. 

Later, Stephanie and Olivia were back where they started and I guess Stephanie was growing tried because she gave Olivia an ultimatum. She asked her if they were friends or not and Olivia told her they weren’t. Some muffled reaction from the other girls and Stephanie stormed away saying, “All I want is to be friends with Olivia...” Stephanie’s friend, Cara, stayed behind to remind everyone that Olivia is actually the bad guy because she was the one that made a password on the playground on the very first day of camp. 

Olivia has definitely won this war, I don’t see Stephanie devastating Olivia in anyway. Stephanie’s last line was sad, but this is the girl who putting chalk on rocks in the morning with a friend, they had five rocks and Stephanie took four. The other girl was left with pretty much a pebble and when that girl started to complain Stephanie told her not to “cry about it.” Olivia knows how to work the system. Could definitely be the leader of her own “plastics” one day. And now my co-counselor, Emily, is in on the drama too- which is interesting because we have some drama of our own...