Bogs And The Lambs That Hate Them. Or Birthday Party
On Saturday, I’m having a birthday party for the girls. Dave’s away and I’ll be on my own so I’m hoping a parent or two will stick around as I elevate the blood sugar of their children to dangerous levels.
I attempted to draw a donkey for Pin The Tail On The Donkey tonight but it’s clear to me that this won’t be a success. I fear that “Come on boys and girls, lets play Pin The Tail On The Bactrian Camel!” will be met with blank stares and that I will cause K&J to be ashamed of their own mother at 4. It will be a personal blow for me too, because I was hoping to hold off the parental shame ’til 6.
I hired a small bouncy castle for surprisingly little money (and in direct party plagiarism of another child’s party we were at recently) so I reckon if I feed up the kids, set them loose on that to shake up their little sugar-laden tummies, and then send then home to their families to vomit, it will be a birthday party well thrown. It’s only a two-hour deal so there probably won’t be too much time for other stuff anyway. In fact, that there is the fact that has broken my poor humpless bactrian camel’s back – he/she is for the bin.
Cheap, bouncy thrills, that’s what today’s preschoolers want, anyway isn’t it? Not the time-honoured party games of yore. If I close my eyes I can smell the peat and potato sacks we used top do our sack-races in. But commercialism is a powerful combatant for a parent, especially once kids go to school. They want Dora The Explorer this and My Little Pony that. The preschool set these days want French lessons and ballet, skiing at Klosters and summers in the Hamptons. They do!
Me, I ‘ad a stick when I was wee. And I was damned happy to have it too. Envy of everyone I was. “Coo, look at her stick!” my friends would say in awe and, if they were lucky, I let them play with it too (we shared our mud ‘cos times was ‘ard and we assumed Cockney accents too, for the same reason).
And I remember when all this (sweeping gesture past the fermenting kiwi fruit in our fruit bowl and onwards to the kitchen sink) was fields and, actually, in Lewis, it still is – lumpy, boggy ones which will break the legs of any lamb foolish enough to attempt a gambol in one but that almost never happens because they are too depressed about the weather. All Lewis sheep suffer from SAD or “Seasonal Affective Disorder” but studies show that treatment with melatonin really helps them get back on their hooves.
Yep, all fields it was, as far as the eye can see because the Hebridean idea of urban sprawl is what happens on the pavement outside the pub when the barman has called time. Sensible town planning and hard drinking – that’s progress Western Isles style. Our town fathers left a small footprint on the environment but a deep headprint on the pavement.
May 5th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The best party the EMBLOS threw for one of the boys involved hot dogs, swimsuits, a garden hose and water balloons. Nothing fancy, just the kids running around the yard splashing all and sundry. Good times.
Cheers.
May 5th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Sam: I’m going to make you girls sit on an ostrich egg at your party so that everyone will sing ‘Hatchy Birthday to You’.
Girls: Hahahaha! No you won’t, Mother.
This joke worked for a pair of gorilla twins, so maybe it’s worth a try.
May 5th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Fill them full of sugar, and for fun get a bunch of Starbucks triple shot mocha valencias. They are so sweet the kids will down them all – thus providing sugar and cafine! Show those parents how good a party you can throw. Oh – and give them all puppies to take home.
May 5th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Good luck! I hope you don’t have to pander to the habit they seem to have developed here of giving ever more expensive goody bags to take home. But hopefully your Scottish heritage will protect you from such silliness.
May 5th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Randall, I put it to you, that on the occasion of your son’s birthday, you did don a swimsuit and hurl water balloons around your garden. I put it to YOU Mr. Sherman that the “birthday party” was a facade, a sham, constructed to allow a respectable lawyer to get silly with a hose. There must be photos.
Mr. Nanas, a splendid suggestion. I don’t think I’ll be able to avail myself of an ostrich egg by tomorrow though. The day my children chill my soul with a frosty “Mother” moniker, is the day I stab at my heart with a toothpick – death by a thousand small hurts etc. My mother calls her own mother “Mother” and if you’ve always done it, what the hey? But when you have deliberately established yourself as Mummy (increasingly morphing into Mommy – we’re sort of midway at Muhmmy right now) that kind of withering despair from your child is the kind that makes mothers turn to the gin and bring up how hard it was to birth them at any available opportunity.
Joe, that is brilliant! But it is a call to arms in the party wars. I’ll be forcing the other parents’ hands in a clear case of parental brinksmanship. They will be furious at the incontinent pups we give them piddling all over their floors, and will keep trying to up the ante. I foresee increasing exoticness and unkeepability of party favours from then on: a clutch of duck eggs each; a snake; a small termite farm. Actually, they are a nice bunch of parents and anyway, I won’t enter a war without a plan to win the peace also. I’m no governmental advisor.
Pat, thanks, my Scottish heritage does protect me from such silliness but, unfortunately, leaves me wide open for all sorts of other sillinesses. (Information withheld – The Authorities). Nice picture of Callander, by the way!
May 6th, 2006 at 2:32 am
Take it from one who knows, bouncy castles are the in thing for the pre-school birthday party, just don’t feed them pizza before they start bouncing unless you want it to make a swift reappearance.
May 8th, 2006 at 7:41 am
Parental shame waits for no mother, or man.
May 13th, 2006 at 12:02 am
When Vanessa (now nearly 18 (!)) was small we had a cream Citroen 2CV and I was forever being asked to draw “Dassa’s lellow car”. 2CVs are quite easy to draw (evidently: I have zero artistic ability) so may I offer “Pin the silencer on the 2CV” as an alternative to the Bactrian Camel?