XXII. Parasitic Birthdays

He was a smaller kid named Sam. His hair was sheep-shorn and he wore the same shirt three of the five days of a school week.

One day Sam stopped to help me fix my Huffy and I became aware that to Sam, a dislodged bike chain was the most instant bond two boys could have. He was having a birthday party at the old park across from the creek that divided our neighborhood and I just had to be there.
"We got a cake and everything," he said as he grinned. Sam always had the upturned red mustache of a boy who doesn't use his sleeve after Kool-Aid.

"Sure," I said.

I remember his mom, rail thin and gap-toothed, sat with her fat sisters on the picnic benches smoking menthols and ignoring our ruckus while we ran around like escapees. We collected pinecones for weaponry and scooped dirt with cupped hands to make conical towers we called "Knight Castles." There were no pony rides. Instead we rode Shawn, Sam's older brother, who I think suffered from rickets and some unspecified head injury that the family kept quiet about when questions were asked. For a parting gift, I got head lice.

It was the best birthday party I remember. I was 7.

I thought about that party this week when I read about the mothers in Minnesota who got together to put a halt to the birthday party arms race that has metastasized in suburbia.
Perhaps you have been to one of these parties. They are all similar. They always start with the birthday parents "renting out" some place. It could be a golf course, a gymnasium or a morgue; the important thing is that no one from "the outside" is let in.

Next they install elaborate decorations like ice sculptures, live statues and original artwork. Perhaps a minor celebrity is hired. Jaleel White is often there. Each guest is assigned a unicorn, and after the jousting and dressage, the unicorns are led into the kitchen to be slaughtered for filets. Then the kids play while the dads eye each other's wives and everyone gets ready for the song. "Happy Birthday" is sung in Italian by a member of the DC Opera wearing a Viking helmet and then the Bible is rewritten inserting the Birthday Child into some of the more significant parts.

It makes me sick. But every parent feels the need to prove their love to their child by doing their best keeping up with the Jerry Joneses. Me? I simply purchase a jar of head lice and open it when everyone's watching the opera gal. It's a great head-scratcher of a trick.