Mating Rituals of the Serengeti and Other Observations

I was watching a nature show earlier this week, while drifting in and out of awareness, letting my extra strong cold medicine take me off into a drug induced nothingness. The truth is, I am addicted to useless facts. I mean, they're not useless for everyone, but pretty much useless to my daily life. In order to feed my useless fact craving, I often turn on Discovery Channel, History Channel, Biography Channel, etc. and listen while I'm doing other things. But I'm finding that while with a fever and taking multiple cold medications is not the time to listen for useless facts. It creates weird dreams, for one.

So, out on the savannah, the lion is king. No surprise there. Lions travel in prides - so called, I'll assume, after the prevailing characteristic of the male. Each pride is comprised of one or two males - they would be the Alpha and the Beta - and a whole lot of females. The male with the biggest muscles, coolest mane and loudest roar is the Alpha. All those Omegas roam on the periphery of the prides, and either live as bachelors, or they form their own lesser prides. They don't have access to a good trainer or a stylist, so they just have to make do with what they have.

So, I'm listening to all of this as I drift in and out of reality, but in my mind I'm picturing my daughter and her friends. This has been a year for social adjustments and a learning curve for my middle school girl. Listening to the mating habits of the lions could be describing the social circles I observe on a daily basis in my girl's school. It's still all about the hair and how loud they can roar. I picked Katie up from a dance party on Halloween, and I was sort of superimposing the lions' terms right over the mental images I had of those adolescents.

I mean, my kid is most definitely an Omega kind of lion. She's aware of it, and she doesn't strive to be anything else. Her friends are Omegas, and they've formed their own pride. It's all good, and I think some of them have pretty good hair - they've got reason to have some pride in their, um, pride. But I think every once in a while, she wonders what it would be like to be part of an Alpha group. She doesn't care enough to pursue the subjucation required of the lioness to join one of those prides, so she just stays with the Omegas. As she says, "we're weird, but you know, we're all the same kind of weird - it's good."

So, by this point, I had weird images in my brain of lions standing upright, wearing Halloween costumes, and dancing, or just trying to be cool Alphas...whatever the situation called for. I watched the Alpha male surrounded by his lionesses - they had staked out a distinct center advantage spot on the dance floor. Beta groups surrounded the big Alpha group. The Omegas had claimed the two corners. And there were "bachelor" males roaming the perimeter. I could almost smell the zebras downwind at this point.

We're so not different from the animals. We all have our own proving grounds, our own social strata, our own pecking order. Adult humans have the advantage that the animals don't have, that we can choose to abandon the social matrix and create our own - although some cling to this animalistic order into their 40's, but hey, it's a choice. It's a right of passage as adolescents, though, to learn to navigate the ins and outs of the grasslands. As long as my kid isn't taking down any hapless wildebeasts, it's all OK with me.

My friend Carlo has a theory that children are born not so different from animals. We "train" them to recognize dangers, to know right from wrong. We use conditioning, rituals, and occasional swats on the behind until they can make decisions on their own. It's a parent's job to help children overcome instinct and use reason instead. Hmmm...I thought he was crazy when he first brought this up. More and more, I'm seeing the transformation, and seeing that he might have had a point. I'm still not planning on putting out a giant kitty litter box for the girls, I mean they're human - no, really. Despite the sometimes unpleasant smells coming from Katie's gym bag, I'm pretty sure they're 100% homo sapien. They walk upright and everything. Then again, I don't have any boys of my own - maybe I would see more evidence of animal nature in that case. Carlo does, after all, have a boy of his own. A good kid, a sweet kid, but the need to spit, tell crude jokes, and spread his scent all crop up from time to time. It's part of the nature of the beast.

So, I wonder what kind of rituals are still ahead of us. I've seen posturing, circling, swoop and strike conversations, and outright ambushes (but those are usually the girls). Maybe I'll just get her some jungle red nail polish and let her battle it out in a primal away. In the mean time, I think I'll see if I've got any more of those good drugs - maybe it'll help me get through the next five or six years of primal social time.