Beastly Boys

Dearly Beloved Daughter was in floods of tears when I picked her up from school a couple of days ago.  We are having an emotional week, her and me.

A boy in the year above, with whom she has been at various schools since she was two, called her 'fat, with a low voice' in front of the little chap she love(s/d) most, and some of her other friends.  Nobody stuck up for her, and then they all went quiet when she walked past.

Aged twelve she has learned something that I didn't learn til I was 50.  That remarkably few people will stand up for you, however much they like you, against someone they perceive as powerful.  I was utterly devastated by the discovery.  Beloved Daughter will be much better prepared.

Since the really big girl in her year left, BD now weighs the most in her year group. She is taller than the boy in question.  

We went to look in the mirror together, and I explained the concept of body dismorphia. "We are about the same fat, or not fat, aren't we?" I said to her as we gazed at our joint reflections, "only you're without the tummy."  We are both statuesque, strong, robust people. Like Princess Diana might naturally have been initially.  My father was the President of the Boats at Cambridge. BD and I would make good rowers, like her two stunning, willowy, 6' cousins who both rowed at Women's Henley last weekend. BD agreed.

"Let's sing 'Feed the Birds'," I then suggested.  She did so with enormous zest, while I accompanied her on the piano, with as much exhuberance as Liberace, but more mistakes.  "Sing the low G, like it says, not the high one," I shouted at her over the din.  She couldn't quite reach it.  Her voice is not low enough.  Just lower than the boy in question's.

The next day she was due to perform one of the only solos: 'Let It Go', from the animated film 'Frozen' on her flute, in front of all her friends at the School Summer Concert. "You are truly going to Let It Go tonight," I announced.  "You are going to get on that stage and knock'em dead.  Are you allowed to wear mascara?"

"No," she replied.

"OK, put some on so it doesn't show too much," I ordered her.  We tried on her old and new school uniform, and opted for the old one which is a little tighter, and she rolled up the kilt an inch or two (the one good thing about the imminent merger with the school across the river is that its uniform might be a little more flattering to all the little girls.) "And buy some new white socks!" I shouted after her, as she got out of the car, ready to face her day.

X was already planning to do the return trip from London (4 1/2 hrs each way) and Granny (84) from Dorset (2 hrs - her driving - each way), just to hear BD's four minutes of fame. How loved is that little girl?

The school dealt with the incident first thing, reporting back to me, and by evening, my beautiful, dazzling blonde Beloved Daughter was up on that stage with the widest smile lighting up her pretty face from ear to ear.  She remembered to close her eyes during the last crescendo of Let It Go and we all went home for supper kindly cooked by X before he left for London, probably to arrive at two in the morning.

So, many thanks from BD to that nasty, short little boy with the high pitched voice. First, the Summer School Concert, next, The World!