Hello Drama Queen

We all ate the same lunch yesterday but for some reason it made me sick. The kids were fine (luckily, since Robin had two friends over).

Anyway, I took the friends home and, after a while...well, I felt much better but also needed a bath. I started the tub and Robin decided to stay and keep me company.

She was telling me about a Hello Kitty video we've rented a couple of times. Apparently The Dog and The Cat were trying to "get" Hello Kitty and she was running away from them and she tried to call her parents but they were on a different planet and besides, the dog and cat uprooted the entire phone booth.

Now, Hello Kitty was big when I was growing up, but there were no movies. There were cute little scented erasers and pale pink note paper and little plastic keychains and vinyl purses and stuff. I was never into it because it was way too sweet and juvenile for my taste. Plus, what a dumb name, right?

So I was frankly shocked to hear about the Evil Dog and the Unreachable Parents and whatnot. I told Robin I had no idea that there was that much drama in a Hello Kitty video. She explained that, really, Hello Kitty and her friends were at the movies and it wasn't scary because that was just the movie they were watching. (Not that "just a movie" kept Elmo in Grouchland from freaking them out...)

Anyway, you know what came next, right? "Mommy, what does drama mean?"

"Well (ummm), drama is like when there's something happening and there's some kind of problem, and the people have to do something to take care of the problem..." (Well, you know what they say: "Delivery is everything." It doesn't come across with quite the same flare in writing, but give me a break. All I've got here is boldface.)

Anyway, she chewed on that for a second, and seemed to understand it. "So then what's a drama queen?"

Hmmm. Good question. Okay. "A drama queen is someone who makes everything into a drama even if it's just a little thing. Like Oh, I have to clean up my toys. It's TERrrrrrible." Nothing like a little real-life example.

She clearly understood that, because less than an hour later she launched into a 45-minute demonstration of the drama, the pathos, the heart wrenching unfairness of having to clear up a bunch of small snips of paper from a tile floor. Nothing like a little real-life example.