My goddaughters Li and Em both had birthdays recently, Li turning 5 and Em turning 3. Each one had a birthday party, and it so happened that Keiko was in town at the same time each party happened, so we went to the parties together.
Birthday parties are a LOT different from what I remember growing up. I hate to sound all I-walked-barefoot-ten-miles-in-the-snow-uphill-both-ways, but birthday "parties" for me were family, a homemade cake, and a couple presents. And on my 10th birthday, the chicken pox. That was a great birthday, let me tell you.
But birthdays today are planned like the Olympics: there are tons of people; non-stop, carefully planned events; and the host country is subtly (or in some cases, not-so-subtly) trying to make sure that its Olympics is better, more fun, and more smoothly run than the Olympics that any previous host country has run. As GA put it the other night, after Em's birthday party: "It's something of an arms race."
Li's birthday party a couple of weeks ago was billed as "a pretend slumber party". Li and 14 of her 5-year-old friends, and several mothers, all came over to the house for a series of events similar to what would happen at an actual girls slumber party: face-painting, eating, storytelling, games played in a circle, and lots of giggling. One thing that differed from such a slumber party, at least from any such slumber party that any putative daughter of mine would ever be allowed to throw, was the presence of a boy. That's right, Li's party featured 14 girls, and Lorenzo. At one point as I was watching the party unfold I turned to Keiko and said:
Me: "I feel really bad for Lorenzo- he's too young to appreciate (a) that he's at a slumber party with 14 girls, and (b) that this is therefore the BEST party he is EVER going to go to. It's all downhill for Lorenzo."
Keiko: "So, what you want is, to be at a slumber party with 14 girls?"
[***ALERT***ALERT*** DANGER Will Robinson! DANGER! Quick- say something humorous and smooth!]
Me: "yes."
[D'OH!]
Keiko: "Grrrr."
Each of the girls [from this point onward, "girls" is assumed to include Lorenzo unless otherwise stated, because let's face it, if he's hanging out exclusively with girls at the age of 5, he thinks he is one, and is just a few short years away from becoming Gaylord McHomo, mayor of Gaytown] brought a sleeping bag and pajamas, and was to be given, on arrival a pillow, and a pillowcase full of goodies.
Earlier that week, on our regular Tuesday night 'boys night', GA had delegated to Laszlo and me the task of going to WalMart and Target to procure the various supplies needed, including pillowcases and the goodies for inside them. This, of course, was a deeply stressful experience for the both of us.
Laszlo: "You go find girly pillowcases while I look for little flashlights."
Me: "Why don't I look for the little flashlights, and you look for the girly pillowcases?"
Laszlo: "I've got the list, and I'm delegating. You get the pillowcases."
Me: "They're YOUR girls. You get the pillowcases!"
Laszlo: "Are you going to be at all helpful with this?"
Me: "Grrr."
So, I headed off to the bedding aisles to try and find girly pillowcases. A bewildering array of kid-themed bedding lined the back wall. Within minutes I had a headache. After giving the area a perfunctory search, I grabbed anything that had pink or purple on it and took it all back to Laszlo, who was busy grabbing little flashlights and batteries.
Me: "Here you go."
Laszlo: "What? 'Spiderman' and 'Cars' are NOT girly. Find stuff with Princesses on it!"
Me: "Look, this was the girliest shit I could find! And c'mon, Tobey Maguire?? Work with me here..."
But, Laszlo was convinced we could do better, so we went back to the wall o' lame bedding and, in short order, discovered that I was mostly right. There really wasn't much girly stuff. We ended up trading Spidey pillowcases in for some ones with horses (no pink or purple on them, so how I was supposed to notice them?), and left it at that.
We managed to get hairbands and t-shirts without much problem, and we decided not to get a book for each kid, since kids' books are like $3 billion dollars apiece anymore, but then it was time to find lip stuff.
Now, I don't know about you, but to me there is no more terrifying place in a store than the cosmetics aisle (or, more typically, aisles). There's just so much stuff. I mean, what the hell can it all possibly be for? It's more terrifying than the 'feminine products' aisle, in which everything at least is inside little packages, so you can pretend you're just buying kleenex or something. Nacole once made me go to the store to get her 'feminine products' for her because she was really sick, and insisted that I was a big baby and not terribly supportive for not being enthused about having to go.
Fortunately, she had the packaging from the most recent supply, so all I had to do was start at one end of the mile-long aisle of little green, blue, pink, and yellow packages, and methodically start comparing my packaging until I found a match. It was like Memory, only with feminine hygiene. "Hmm, ultra super thin, extra protection, with wings and struts and emergency parachute? Nope. Extra super thin, ultra protection, with escape hatch and driver's side airbag? Nope. Extra ultra thin, super duper protection, with extended cab and gun rack? Nope. [3 hours later...] Super duper ultra thin, extra maximum protection, with wings and bells and whistles. In a green package with yellow wavy shit on it. YES!!"
Anyway, there Laszlo and I stood, at the beginning of the vast expanse of products that women use for, as my Russian host brother Oleg used to say, "the cosmetic reconstruction of the face."
Laszlo: "Um, so, do you think we should get lipstick?"
Me: "Uh, I dunno. I think my girl students tend to wear lip gloss, rather than lip stick. But I don't really know. I only dimly understand the difference."
Laszlo: "Crap. Let's just pick something and get the hell out of here."
So, we bought the first thing we found that seemed extremely girly and intended for use on the lips, and then beat a hasty retreat. Upon arrival back at Laszlo's house, we proudly put the bags of stuff down on the counter for GA's inspection.
GA: "Uh, 'Cars'?"
Us: "Well, there weren't many princessy pillowcases so we got the girliest ones we could."
GA: "OK. Um, don't you think these flashlights are a little... big... for 5 year old girls?"
Us: "Uh..."
GA: "No books?"
Us: "Books were super expensive."
GA: "You couldn't find scrunchies?"
Us: "Those aren't 'scrunchy'?"
GA: "OK, thanks for your help. You boys can go play your game."
Fortunately for us- well, Laszlo really- GA has an old-fashioned, noblewoman's stoicism about these things, so we retreated to the den to play HALO 3. When little girls need saving from hordes of vicious aliens bent on nothing less than the extermination of the entire human race, Laszlo and I are the men you want on the job. When little girls need 'scrunchies', we're less obviously the people to turn to.
When the day of the party arrived, Keiko and I came over to help set up, and shortly thereafter the girls started arriving. Soon there were 14 girls, Lorenzo, Laszlo and GA, me and Keiko, and several mothers. As the only adults present without kids of our own, Keiko and I were prime targets for the bored mothers. "Travel!", implored one mother, "Travel as much as you can, because once you have kids, you're staying put for a while." Um, thanks, but if I ever have kids, they're going to travel too. Even if traveling is less fun with kids, I'll bet it's more fun than the less-than-zero fun "staying put" is.
A few hours later, after face-painting, eating, storytelling, games played in a circle, and lots of giggling, the girls (and Lorenzo) left, leaving GA to put the girls to bed and Laszlo, Keiko, and me to restoring the house to its original state, which is to say, virtually spotless and with everything in its designated space. It's amazing Laszlo and I had 2 good years in college as roommates, given our very distinct philosophies about living spaces. For Laszlo, a dish in the sink is deeply troubling, whereas for me, a dish in the sink means 25-30 more dishes to go before there's a full dishwasher's worth, at which point I will finally do the dishes as they should be done: in a batch process.
Another thing that deeply troubles Laszlo is the thought that anyone he knows, no matter how superficially, has anything short of surgically clean hands. Consequently, Emily's birthday party, which featured a horde of 3-year-olds, was a very stressful time for him. While GA managed the flow of activities, Laszlo functioned as a floater, prowling around with handi-wipes looking for dirty hands to clean. Which, given the aforementioned horde of 3-year-olds, was a full-time job.
The main attraction at Emily's birthday party was Ariel. While most little girls seem to have some kind of bizarre princess fixation, Emily takes it to a whole new level. And Ariel is pretty much her favorite princess. So Laszlo and GA hired a woman who comes to your house dressed as Ariel, complete with a mermaid bottom thingy that forces her to have to shuffle around with super-teeny steps. Naturally, she was a big hit with all the girls. The boys seemed less interested, except Lorenzo, who was back for more and frankly is clearly on the fast train to Queerville.
Keiko was in town for this party also, and as she, I, GA, and Laszlo (taking a short break from wiping hands) observed Ariel, we decided she was actually a little creepy. Not in a kidnap/molest/butcher the kids kind of way, but in a you-have-to-be-freakish-to-be-doing-this-frequently kind of way. We started off by having a lively debate on whether Ariel was really Man-riel, given some of her body proportions, but we ultimately decided in favor of feminine based on facial features and voice.
Eventually, creepy Ariel left, and after another round of eating, games, running around crazily, and forced hand-wiping, the horde of kids and parents left. Fortunately, there was one dad there also so I spent some time talking to him. We started off on the wrong foot, since he gets paid slave wages to teach math at the local depressed urban public high school, and I get paid a trillion dollars an hour to teach math in a cushy office with a big window, but we warmed up to each other when I decided to (a) let him speak at length about his views on teaching math, (b) not take him too seriously since he lives in a $2 million dollar house that his parents bought for him.
All in all, the parties were fun, if exhausting. I don't know how GA manages running events like that. I think if I ever have kids they'll be allowed to have one friend apiece, which will simplify parties a great deal. To the extent they take after me they'll probably only have one friend anyway...
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