Middle School is difficult enough to navigate, but when you are the new kid things can be even trickier. My thirteen year old daughter, Cameron learned this lesson yesterday.
In Evergreen Middle School, where Cam spent her 6th and 7th grade years, "going out" with someone was the norm and changing boyfriends/girlfriends was as common as switching what color of Converse tennis shoes you favored that week. But at her new school in Manhattan the concept is only being tested by a hormone driven few. The first few weeks of school Cameron was courted by two cute boys and I'm not actually sure why she chose one over the other, because she seemed to have more in common with the discarded fellow, but for whatever reason, Jeremy won the prize. The course of their three week relationship is neither here nor there, the piont of my story is that they broke up yesterday. What the boyfriend did not know was the Cameron has been texting and FBing an old flame from Evergreen over the last few weeks. In Cameron's defense she is still homesick and holding on to love from sweet days gone by is a natural thing to do to keep emtionally connected to her past life.
So Cameron does the mature thing and tells Jeremy to his face (no texting or second party breaking-up). She has the weight of the world off her shoulders after misery of getting the "it's not you it's me" and "we work better as friends" speech out of her way. Of course, she does the only natural thing and goes on to Facebook to post her new status as SINGLE and within hours back to IN A RELATIONSHIIP. Here in lies the rub.
No one at her new school really cares if she is dating Jeremy or not. As I said before this is more of a novel idea for this group, but what could backfire on her is the alliance these kids have to Jeremy over Cameron. I can not express to you enough how this class has embraced Cameron. I would venture to say she is one of the most popular girls in her class. But her error is in thinking that she would break-up with one of their own and hook-up with a boyfriend from her past life in Colorado. As I explained it to her as I walked her to school this morning - these kids think of you as one of them now. They want to believe that they have won your heart and if you had to chose you would happily stay in Manhattan with them as opposed to going back to your life in Evergreen. But by dumping Jeremey and then turning around and going out with your old Colorado flame you are in essense saying "Well, I tried a New York guy, but I still prefer Colorado boys." Their natural instinct is going to be to rally around Jeremy and cast you back to where you came from.
Miraculously, as I explained this, she seemed to understand and agree with me. As damage control I had gotten on to her Facebook account last night (yes, I have her password) and changed her status back to single and deleted a photos from last year's Winter Dance of her and Ryan that she had posted yesterday. I had expected her to cry, to yell at me for touching her FB, and tell me that she wants to move back to Colorado and does not care at all what people think of her in New York. But Cameron has a survivors spirit. I am shocked and in awe of her undestanding of her need to be a chameleon.
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