Teenage Dramas - RM column May 11

THE Young Wan has had a pretty miserable time lately after falling out with some of her wee pals.

The incident preceding her isolation was full of the amateur dramatics associated with teen dramas and all began when one friend (a boy) fancied one of the other girls in the group.

To cut a long and boring story short the falling out occurred when my daughter told the girl something the boy said about something unrelated to his crush and he denied it.

Feeling umbrage for Ireland the Young Wan was not speaking to the boy and he was not speaking to her.

At first this was quite funny because the pals would call to the door and this particular wee fella would call too but ignore her.

This went on for weeks before I proceeded to ask the Young Wan to phone him up and talk to him about it and apologise for any misbehaviour on her part.
Only he wouldn’t speak to her at all and left her very upset.

The only thing I could offer her was to say that I didn’t think it gracious that he wouldn’t even talk to her let alone be big enough to accept an apology.

That was about six weeks ago and just before the prank phone calls started.

Because this young chap fell out with her, so did the rest of them. And not content with not speaking to her en-masse, they began to make nuisance phone calls to our house. To begin with they were just hang-ups but they progressed to something more sinister.

On one particular Sunday they phoned a number of times and even left a message when I was on a call and such a charming message it was ‘we all hate you, we hope you die!’.
The Young Wan wanted to take the phone off the hook to avoid the calls and I could see the whole thing was starting to have an awful effect on her with constant complaints of a sore tummy.

So I told her not to take the phone offline but instead to answer it and hand it to me and I would deal with it.

Lo and behold they rang again, I could tell by the awful look on her face, so I took the phone off her.

I informed the pranksters that the Gardai were notified about the prank calls and to keep calling because the more they did the more evidence we would have, besides it was a wet Sunday afternoon what else had I to do but listen to some eejits waste their mobile phone credit making stupid noises on the phone.

The difference in my daughter was massive, she had a big beaming smile on her face for the first time that week. She thought I was great. And I’d like to think I gave her a boost to be brave and move on from these obviously horrid children.

I’ve no doubt they think this is all a bit of fun, but I saw the effects of their fun on her and I was shocked by the ‘we hate you’ statement.

Later that evening whilst out walking the dog the Young Wan encountered the boy who made the nasty comments walking with the boy who originally fell out with her and his parents.

She went up to them saying hello and the parents spoke back asking about her and me. She then said: “We’ve been getting these awful prank phonecalls and we had to phone the Gardai. One even said they hated me and hoped I die, isn’t that awful?’

The parents agreed that it was indeed and who would do such a terrible thing. She then said bye to everyone and came back in looking like a different wee girl.
Children can be absolutely horrible to each other and I can easily see just how much this so-called pranking (I’d call it bullying, intimidation and harrassement) can drive a child to do something drastic.

They have phoned since and she said in a faux-American accent ‘I’m sorry there is no one to take your call, we are far too busy to deal with assholes’.

In this instance I have to say there was no correction for bad language.

Thankfully now the Young Wan doesn’t want to be friends with these people again, they are no longer her type and I am happy for that. But I do feel for her having to go through it in the first place.

I would not be a teenager again for anything.

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