There were six Room Moms in my grade this year. Two Full Time Jobs. One Alpha, One Beta. One Transitional (former working/Beta with chip on shoulder, moving into Alpha. They were not all awful. Dealing with them was. When asked if she was going to be a Room Mom again, T said “HELL NO!” Same with Alpha and Beta. FTJ #1 seemed to feel the same way, but was too hostile to even communicate that much with the other three. The remaining FTJ was too FTJ to be found.
One of the FTJs told the FTD that she had a problem with Betamom. Actually, she told the FTD, several teachers, other parents, etc. She hated the Alpha too, but truly, you have to find it somewhat interesting that she bothered to focus on a Beta. We usually get overlooked. The other FTJ, as well as the T, mostly focused their energy on hating the Alpha. But Alpha’s tend to organize a pack like that, by channeling the discontent. It goes with the territory. And Alphas seem to know they’re not going to win friends with their ruthless competence.
So, here’s the thing: is there such a thing as a good room mom experience?
Granted, if there was, I wouldn’t be the one to have it. But has it ever really gone well? Has a group of parents ever willingly worked together and not Hated Everything Everyone Does In A Verbal And Inflammatory Fashion And On A Highly Personal Level? Have we really ever learned to play with each other any better than the children? And why do we care so much about what the other Moms do and do not do?
What is really going on here? Why do we hate each other so much?
BetaMom’s Theories on Inter-Mom Tribal Warfare:
1. We resent your competence, and we’re scared of you, because you’re probably a bitch or
2. We mock your incompetence, and we think you’re a loser because you’re probably an idiot or
3. We resent kiss-ass teacher pets, and we see right through you because you’re probably a big phoney or
4. If the teachers hate you, we hate you too. You’re probably a nut case or
5. We’re jealous if you do something well, just because we probably didn’t do it or
6. We’re gleeful and spiteful if you do something badly, especially in front of the teachers. And we’ll make sure they know about it, or
7. We hate you for being cheap. We mocked your lameass Ralphs brownie plate or
8. If you’re a big spender, we accuse you of “not getting it,” or “ratcheting things up a notch.” We think you’re showing off or
9. We believe the things we hear about you, even if deep down we know it isn’t true or
10. We’re secretly suspect you already hate us, too.
The point being, we can either give up and not ever set foot in our children’s schools or we’re going to have to find a way to do this thing.
So here’s what BetaMom recommends: Truce. Pinky Square. Call it for what it is. We promise not to expect you to like us. We promise not to try to like or not like you. If you won’t believe everything you hear about us, we won’t believe everything we hear about you. At the end of the day, we’ve all bought brownies from Ralphs. And we’ve all thought about embroidering a pillow that says I Hate All These People.
It’s just none of us knew how to embroider.
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