Meeting a friend you truly connect with and with whom you have an easy relationship is a unique blessing. I’ve had that with most of the people I call my closest friends. Sennen seems to have that with Ethan and they both share it with their friend, Nathan. They all do well as a pair and a trio. That’s rare.
Sometimes, however, the other shoe drops.
Just two days ago, the budding friendship with Savina seemed so promising. The day at the beach was the proverbial day at the beach. At night, things took a turn. Savina came over for dinner and at first, all was well. The kids watched a movie, ate gyros and talked. Then they played ball in the front yard and eventually decided to go up to the roof.
This is when Savina’s “friends” came to the dirt lot next to the house and began yelling up to the group. The story quickly came out something along the lines of the girls used to be friends with Savina, now they hate her, bully her and have done a lot of mean things to her. For their part, the girls were coming off mean, even if much of the conversation was in Greek, leaving Ethan and Sennen feeling like they should stand up for poor, berated Savina. In one of his less stellar moments, Sennen threw cat treats at the girls to get them to go away.
Needless to say, the encounter ended poorly although one of the more lewd 13-year-old girls with some rudimentary English and advanced swearing clearly communicated she would like to have sex with Ethan. Again needless to say, that positively impacted Ethan’s mood and ego. Yet, the overall conclusion is those girls were “bitches”.
The next evening – aka last night – Savina came by uninvited wanting to talk to the kids. She said she needed to talk to some girl her age and needed protection from her because the girl had been very mean and hurt her in the past. The request and drama struck the kids as odd, but given events of the preceding evening, the boys were willing to go along while Ailyn more willingly went to support a friend.
Apparently, nothing of note happened and once Savina had her conversation, Ailyn, Sennen and Ethan returned home and went about their usual activities including barbecuing steaks for dinner. It was during dinner when Savina came by again unannounced, crying – saying she had nowhere else to go and needed to talk to someone. Some girls had been very mean. Her phone was out of battery too. She sat down at the table with us and of course I offered her some dinner which Savina declined and Ailyn offered to charge her phone, which Savina accepted.
We quickly finished eating and I used cleaning up as an opportunity to extricate myself from an odd situation. The kids talked and decided to go on a walk with Savina.
I was sitting at the patio table working, as I do, when they returned.
“Something is not right with Savina!” Ethan proclaimed.
“Yeah, there’s something wrong with her. I talked with the other girls. Savina lies and causes problems,” Sennen shared.
Ailyn didn’t love what they were saying, but also didn’t contradict them.
The short summary is the boys feel Savina, not the other kids of Patmos, is the problem. Savina didn’t want Ailyn, Sennen or Ethan to talk with the girls and when Sennen wanted to hear what they had to say, Savina tried to stop him. “I told her I had heard her side of things, I wanted to hear their side of the story. She got really upset and said we should go and watch a movie. I went to talk to the girls and she yelled, so I told her ‘Savina, go down to Spiros and cool off!'”
Spiros is a ceramics and art shop Sennen deemed sufficiently far enough down the road for it to be a good distance – and Spiros who owns the shop is a nice guy – but I can’t see why that shop, of all possibilities was the best choice.
Nonetheless, when Savina objected, Sennen asked Ethan to escort her down the street so Sennen could talk to the local girls.
In short, they said Savina lies, plays wounded, manipulates people and should not be believed. Sennen and Ethan apologized for yelling back at them the prior evening and for throwing cat treats. They apparently accepted graciously saying they understood the boys believed Savina – that’s what she does. In the process, all three kids learned all of the local girls’ names and where they hang out.
The postmortem conversation left Ailyn torn. She wants to be Savina’s friend – but she sees the concerns.
I took the lead and explained that I too picked up inconsistencies and concerns about Savina. While I don’t know exactly what her story is and I’m not a professional, it seems possible to me she may have a Borderline personality and that’s a person who is usually best to keep some distance from. Ailyn can of course be friends with her if Ailyn wants, but she should do so with her eyes wide open and to take care if she sees more troubling behaviors. We can see from other girls and from Savina’s own stories that Savina doesn’t seem to keep friendships and has a lot of bad blood on a small island.
“We cannot have Savina come to the beach,” Ethan said.
“She asked to come with us tomorrow and we don’t want that,” Sennen added.
I agreed – no more beach.
Sennen has taken to ensuring the latch on the front gate locks each time we come and go – as if Savina can’t figure out latches. Nonetheless, his instinct is on target.
On the other hand, the aftermath of the Savina situation may be good. On the way to the gym, the 13-year-old-girl-crew waved at and talked to the kids. Sennen and Ethan are going out tonight to see if they can find the group of girls. Ethan in particular is hoping the girls can introduce him to “the really hot girl with the short pants” who is likely older than them.
Last night, before going out to aid Savina, Ethan borrowed a casual button-down shirt from Sennen which looked very cool on him. Today he wore it around town unbuttoned and then to the beach at Lampi. He’s planning to go out with it this evening. Sennen is happy to pass the shirt along to Ethan who in turn seems determined to maximize what it can do for his street cred.
Who knows what will come of the Savina relationship? Hopefully, we can find a way to be friendly without being friends. We definitely don’t want drama during our summer or on Patmos in general. The benefits of losing one’s anonymity come with costs and responsibilities.
Learning to navigate a situation with someone who doesn’t check out is an important life skill. Better to begin in a small and safe way. I’m not sure you can always order a girl to be escorted to Spiros (or any shop – ceramic or otherwise) for a time-out, but it was nice to see Sennen had some instincts about how to handle the challenge.
Now we just need to make sure hanging out with the town girls doesn’t lead to anything proposed by that one girl with a shocking English vocabulary….
