My Tempered Tantrum

image credit: tv on Flickr

The results are in. The decision is final. The cats of the clan have been left gutted on the floor of the arena, The Mockingjay the clear victor. Yep, move over Firestar. Surrender, Graystripe. Be gone, Leafpool. Make way for Katniss Everdeen.

Finally, after years of obsession with everything Warrior related, Squirt is moving on to more “mature” literary passions. Erin Hunter and her Warrior book series will soon be relegated to the far, dusty reaches of the bookshelf, as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy takes her place in the creative nooks and crannies of Squirt’s pre-teen brain.

How did this change come about so suddenly? Well, it all began with a Warrior Clan Gathering, sponsored by our local library. Squirt, accompanied by her fellow Warrior devotees, enthusiastically attended this gathering, decked out in her finest Warrior attire (Her Scourge Halloween costume). As the gathering concluded, and I wandered into the library in search of my little feline, I was prepared for days, perhaps even weeks, of animated discussion about the gathering. Instead, as I asked about the event, I was met with a solemn face and a dejected shrug of her shoulders.

“It was okay,” she replied.

Hardly the response I had anticipated. As it turns out, most of the Warrior fans were several years her junior, and the featured activities seemed equally childish to my maturing adolescent. As some girls gradually lose interest in their dolls and dress-up clothes, my child was suddenly feeling too old for Warriors.  Hundreds of doodles of Warriors Cats, countless fan created stories, years of imaginative play with her friends, cat costumes, cat calendars, cat dishes, cat stickers, cat… everything. She was mourning all of it.

In her lonely, Warrior-less, state of mind, she was susceptible to a new obsession, and it soon presented itself.  I read The Hunger Games. Her step-dad read The Hunger Games. Some of her classmates were reading The Hunger Games. She couldn’t resist. After a healthy mother-daughter discussion about the subject matter and violence of the book, I loaned her my copy. I haven’t seen it since.

Less than a month later, she has read all three books, and re-read the first two. She is trying to decide on her own character from The Hunger Games, which district she is from, what her special talent is, and so on. She designs arenas with her friends and they even play The Hunger Games at recess.  It’s not just her, either. Almost every day, I hear about one classmate or another whose copy of the book was confiscated, or who got in trouble for trying to sneak read it during math class.

Recently, she inquired about a Katniss Everdeen Halloween costume, and then asked if she could have a Hunger Games birthday party, one that would greatly surpass the success of last year’s Warrior’s party.  I cringed as I imagined myself trying to explain it to the other parents: a specially designed arena filled with gruesome and violent methods of death and destruction, a simulated battle to the death in the backyard.

Dare I say that I may actually come to miss the Warrior days?