Roon was born in March so, naturally, we had his birthday party June 25th. We rented the pool with the coolest slides, ordered pizza, and invited 346 ten year old boys. Who all spent the night in my basement attempting to balance themselves on the brink of death until three in the morning.
Now I am a sincerely cool parent and while I may not plan parties on time, I do ensure that the boys have a good time. I use my most advanced and preferred tool: my attorney. This time my attorney ensured a good time by filling a large bag with silly string cans and handing them out in the front yard.
I thought this was cool. I was really looking forward to this part because silly string rocks almost as much as cool Nerf guns and I had enough silly string that I’d made it onto the Fed’s list of arms dealers. I lined the monkeys up, armed them, and let them shoot. We coated the yard and each other with a chiaroscuro of spaghetti threads. Each kid had three cans and they just kept spraying, screaming, and screaming, and spraying. It was awesome.
For like eight seconds.
Then one of the boys, and I won’t say who because all their parents read my blog (if only to check it for porn links) but one of them ran up to me, screaming, and deftly sprayed his silly string INTO HIS OWN EAR. I chase him into the house, make him sluice his ear with water until I’m comfortable that a) he’s ok, and b) he’ll never, ever do something so frikking dumb again. We run back outside and he’s barely off the last step, like midair even, when some other screaming kid sprays him in the face.
SIMULTANEOUSLY one of the parents who lives nearby was passing and skidded to a stop in front of what must have looked like some kind of hippy hazing ritual. In three and a half seconds her van was tatooed with purple snotwads and she was staring, mouth quite literally agape, as I screamed at my wife to take the kid into the house and WASH HIS EYES!
She called her son over to her van and had a long hushed talk with him. She called again later and stopped by once to bring him some shoes and he didn’t stay the night. I can’t blame her.
The rest of the night they spent playing Halo and Spongebob games. At one point my son raced upstairs, his chest bursting with pride, his face flush yelling for me. He’d managed to lock his friend in an elevator in Halo and his friend kept respawning in it and he kept killing him and the elevator was piling up with bodies. He was so proud.
They also spent the night peppering their opinions with “gay” as in “those Doritos are gay” or “your shoes are so gay” and “after being told his backpack was gay “that’s gay.” At one point, two of the boys had put their t-shirts on upside down and had stuck two of the styrofoam balls that had once filled the gut of the beanbag chair on their nipples and were prancing–PRANCING–around the basement chirping GAY GAY GAY.
My initial response was that I should sit them down and explain that GAY is not the same as, say, BLUE or CHINESE and shouldn’t be used in such a cavalier fashion but I honestly couldn’t do it because they all have such a finely honed sense of humor that one of them would’ve waited patiently until I was finished and then said: that’s so gay.
We managed to get through the night without me saying the F word or appearing nude so I’m failry certain all the same boys will arrive for the party next year though I’m mot entirely convinced the one who’s mom showed up–three times–will RSVP next time. I should reassure them: next time, no silly string.
Next time: paint ball.
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Originally posted 2007-06-27 22:02:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
