Page 91 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

Boys Will be Boys – Or How Drosselmeir Came Back into the Picture
“Boys being boys” were no more noticed at the party downstairs, than they ever were. The men either yelled for them to stop their mischief or complained about how they never acted that way when they were boys. The women cattily commented with a high-degree of self-righteousness about the Stahlbaums’ abysmally poor parenting skills. The girls simply fled in terror to somewhere safe. And then from that safe spot taunted the boys, hoping to goad them into committing some really rash act and giving the girls the pleasure of seeing the boys punished – and themselves held up for comparison as visions of sugar and spice and everything nice. Let’s face it – we humans are sometimes rotten to the core.
So, to most in the room, the party was just a typical party and the boys were just typical “boys being boys.”
However, Drosselmeir observed a very worrisome trend in their behavior. Not only were the boys running about bothering everyone and creating a great deal of noise and
77