My little song birds
March 23, 2009 
This year, I had the opportunity to go to The Mother Hen’s Winter Chorus Festival. It is a competition with other schools. If they had scored really well, they would have gotten to go to the state finals. It took place during school hours, so it was a field trip and I chaperoned. I was shorter than most of the kids there. The Mother Hen thought this was hilarious. She kept teasing me about it all day.
When they sang before the judges, I thought they did a stellar job. Their teacher was even telling them how proud of them she was. After the performance, we went to workshop. In workshop, professional singers give them tips on how they can improve as a group. It was fun to watch because the woman running the workshop was having them manipulate their voices to change the mood of the songs that they had sung. After workshop, we went on to sight reading. Sight reading is where they have to sing a piece of music that they have never seen before. The first establish rhythm and then had to sing the notes. (Ex Do Re Me) This looked really hard and I did not envy them for having to even try it. They struggled with it, but they were rated pretty well. They did not score high enough to make it to states but they still took home a medal, which was pretty neat.
The real competition was going on behind the scenes. The bully of the group was picking on one of the other girls. She was calling her cell phone, using the restricted *67 to mask who she was. When the girl would answer, the bully would hang up. This went on several times throughout the morning. Finally, we we were at dinner, the whole situation came to a head. The girl sat at the same table as The Mother Hen, the chorus teacher and I. She told The Mother Hen what was going on and she was very upset. Some girls at the table behind us over heard her. They began shouting, “Jeez, can’t you take a joke!” They were berating her for mentioning it in front of me and the teacher. Honestly, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe they were jumping on her case for being upset. To make matter worse, the chorus teacher told her to bring her phone bill to class to make the bully pay for the calls. They continued to make snide comments to her throughout dinner.
My only thought was, “My little song birds, you guys are very good. But, you could be great. If you just sang together and stopped preaching hate.”
Life and Times of a Wicked Step Mom 
I remember going to those competitions. I had come into chorus midway through the year and never learned sight reading, so when we went to competition, I just blended in with everyone on the first note and got my cue where to go next.
Girls can really be hateful. That’s usually when the bully needs to be brought to attention in front of everyone else. They want attention, just not negative from adults. One girl in my chorus class used to bother me because of my long hair, and one day I called her out in front of everyone and the teacher. She threatened me, I stood up to her, and she left me alone immediately.
Ugh, kids can be so cruel. I think about all of the cruelty that I witnessed growing up and am terrified of my kids encountering similar scenarios.
That sight reading would have me stressed out.
Oh, how I feel for that girl. I hope that everything turns out right for her. And that the bully gets what’s coming to her. Ok, that sounded mean. But I meant, in a karma-kind of way.
And you are totally right. If they loved each other, and got along then they would be awesome.
Arghhh. This age is so difficult with girls. I don’t understand why we’re so mean to each other. I think it starts at Mother Hen’s age, and in many ways continues throughout our lives where women seem to pick at each other more than we band together. I wish it wasn’t so.
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