The tears of youth

I was planning on writing about something else today, but changed my mind with events unfolding at my homestead.

My 9-year old cheerleading diva just burst into tears. Not "look at me because I need attention" tears, but real sobbing, shirt soaking, alligator tears. She did the same thing a few days ago. Now, to understand my (and my dh's) frustration with this is know that typically when our daughter is upset, she refuses to talk. At all. Not a word. Nada. Just sobbing and wailing. And usually we have no idea what is wrong. Such is the case as of late...

When our daughter sunk into her wailing isolation a few days ago, it took us HOURS to finally get her to speak. The cause of her the-world-is-over-for-me tears? Club Penguin. For those of you not familiar with Club Penguin, it is an internet game by Disney, where members create an animated penguin, decorate an animated igloo and play silly games. Yes, an internet game has brought my child to producing rivers of tears. And not just once. The incident a few days, the one that took hours to figure out, was over the fact that she could not log into this virtual penguin land. Turns out, Disney forgot to renew it's web domain. Disney. The company that was built on making children happy had now done something that produced an ocean of tears for children all over the world! In my mind, it wasn't such a big deal. An inconvenience, yes, especially since we are paying a nominal monthly fee for our daughter to have access. But apparently for the countless kids out there, this event was of catastrophic proportions.

Today's ordeal was almost as life-ending. The cheer diva's special code did not open the right virtual catalog! Oh, the horrors! To be young again...

Of course, I may be reduced to tears as well if I had ordered Cosmo and got Fisherman's Digest instead.