Party Animals

Newsletter 2023-10-09

I’m not very good at birthday parties. It’s tough to be happy on command. Plus there’s the whole mortality angle. It seems weird to celebrate that we’ve used up yet another year of our natural lifespans. Unnatural lifespans are a different story. As soon as they can upload my mind to the singularity, I’ll be delighted to celebrate the fact that I’ve squandered yet another rotation around the sun. My USB drive will be cake-compatible.

Children’s birthday parties are another matter entirely. This weekend, my wife’s co-worker threw one for her son, who turned four. That’s an amazing age when everything is either the best ever or the worst ever with no in between. It’s an existence of dramatic highs and crushing lows that, if you experienced them as an adult, would require serious medication. Kids that age always live in the moment because they can’t remember yesterday and have no idea what’s coming tomorrow. Literally anything is possible. The kid’s mom took advantage of that and hosted an amazing thematic birthday party. It made me realize that I’m bad, not just at having fun at parties, but also at throwing them.

My go-to move is to combine as many birthday parties as possible so I can host them fewer times. My oldest three girls have birthdays in a cluster from mid-May to early June, so we throw one big celebration for the lot of them. We clean our house once, send out one batch of Facebook invites, and kick everyone out at the same time, thus concluding our hosting duties for the year. At least that’s the way things used to be. Then our youngest, Waffle, decided to be born in November, so she gets a party of her own. That’s a much more subdued affair because it’s only for one kid and many people skip it since they get their mandatory visit to our house out of the way in the spring. Not that Waffle is disenfranchised in any way. Half the people at the spring triple birthday party buy presents for Waffle, too, so really, she gets two birthday parties. She knew what she was doing when she decided to be born in the other half of the year. And, yes, it really was up to her. She’s been in charge from the start.

While I’ve thrown a lot of birthday parties over the years, this weekend made me realize I’ve been failing at a major part of the process: picking a theme. Our theme every year is “birthday party.” I thought that was enough. There’s cake, ice cream, and presents. If we’re being really ambitious, there might be balloons. When someone walks into our house, they’ll see all of those things and immediately think, “Hey, this is a birthday party.” You can’t be much more on brand than that. Unfortunately, that’s no longer enough. The party this weekend was safari themed. It was the kind where you see lots of animals, not where you shoot them, which appeals to an entirely different crowd. The latter might be a bit traumatic for a preschooler’s birthday party, but to each their own. Actually, scratch that. I will judge you so hard if you train your four-year-old to shoot an elephant.

The decorations at the kid’s birthday party this weekend were quite impressive. There were stuffed animals, balloon animals, and thematic snacks. The veggie platter with hummus dip was shaped like a lion, which made everyone reluctant to dig in. You don’t eat art. There was also a station to build your own binoculars out of toilet paper rolls. They were less than effective at seeing wildebeests far away, but, thanks to all the sparkly stickers, they were very stylish. The only fashion rule you need to understand before the age of ten is that glitter is cool. For the last six months, my wife has been reminding everyone in our family to save our empty toilet paper rolls so we could donate them to this project. The success of the party hinged largely on my bathroom habits. To everyone who enjoyed craft time this weekend, you’re welcome.

My wife’s co-worker put more planning into her son’s birthday party than some generals put into major military operations. Compared to her, Eisenhower threw together the D-Day landings at the last minute. It’s said that failing to plan is planning to fail. A valid counterpoint should be that planning ahead of time leaves more time for failure to strike. The safari theme extended beyond the decorations; there were supposed to be actual animals. My wife’s co-worker hired a traveling act to bring ten small to medium sized critters for a private show. She even paid extra for the Arctic fox, which I believe was the second-highest option. I suspect the polar bear package was out of her price range. Then, days before the event, the animal guy flaked. Who would have guessed that a dude who travels around with a van full of snakes for a living would be unreliable? He claimed a relative had a serious car accident, so my wife’s co-worker had her son’s party ruined and also got to feel guilty for being mad about it. Animal van guy really offered the full experience.

Party mom wasn’t defeated yet. You don’t spend six months collecting toilet paper rolls just to let your son’s birthday be canceled by serious bodily injury. She worked the phones all week, reaching out to anyone and everyone in a five-state area who might have animals. Everyone was booked up. The demand for live non-human entertainment is off the charts. If you were looking for a niche market to break into, this is it. Two days before the party, one animal company said they had a crew available. Then they ghosted her. More than a little stressed out, the mom made approximately a million unanswered phone calls. The company finally confirmed for the Saturday party at 9:50 pm Friday night. The party was saved.

The late hour of salvation meant there wasn’t time to cancel plan b. When the first animal guy bailed, Lola’s co-worker booked a bounce house just in case. This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill inflatable play structure. It was a bouncy jungle volcano with a slide thematically consistent with the rest of the party. That’s simply what you do in that neighborhood. When I pulled into the subdivision Saturday, I nearly drove to the wrong party because there was a rival bounce house in a yard on the other side of the retention pond. If there’s one thing all little kids enjoy, regardless of party theme, it’s futilely attempting to defy gravity for half a second at a time. When we got to the correct party, my kids made a direct line for the volcano. It was big enough to accommodate children of all sizes, including me. I resisted the urge to enter. My knees have enough trouble on solid ground. I promised Lola I’m done with surgeries for this quarter. The birthday boy had no such hesitation. He made out like a bandit. He got the bounce house and the animal show—but only if the animal show actually showed up. Halfway through the party, no one was sure if the animal guy would actually appear. Then the doorbell rang. The main event had arrived.

Two guys in their early twenties walked around to the back of the house and came in through the sliding glass doors with coolers full of animals. If it’s good enough for a picnic lunch, it’s good enough for a mobile menagerie. If I owned an animals-in-a-van party company, I would probably dump the featured attractions in the middle of the living room and let everybody gawk. That wasn’t enough for these guys. They put on an actual show. They went through a whole production with rehearsed jokes and big reveals. As the animal wranglers built momentum toward their first surprise from the cooler, I watched from behind the kitchen island near another of my wife’s co-workers. He told me that he would be fine with anything as long as there were no frogs. He had a weird phobia, probably related to a repressed childhood memory. I assume Kermit murdered his entire family. The very first animal to come out of the cooler was a giant bullfrog. The co-worker retreated to a corner in obvious distress. It was wonderful. If you’ve ever wanted to see a grown man more frightened than all the children in the room, I can’t recommend traveling animal shows highly enough. Be sure to get a list of all your guests’ greatest fears before requesting varmints. It was like Saw and Animal Planet had a baby.

Photo by Jack Hamilton on Unsplash

The show proceeded through nine more animals, alternatingly delighting and traumatizing various people in the room. Highlights included a tarantula, an owl, and a skunk that had been de-scented. A fully intact skunk would have made for a much better show, especially since it wasn’t being held at my house. I’m not afraid of frogs, snakes, or spiders, but the second one of those dudes pulled out an armed and loaded skunk, I would have run for my life. Besides being the animal version of a haunted house, the show was also educational. The animal handlers said that, if you’re ever sprayed by a non-surgically altered skunk, you should use Dawn dish soap instead of tomato juice. The latter is a myth promoted by Big Tomato. This is your weekly reminder that fruit is a scam.

The show ended with a chance for all the kids to pet the animals. I hastily shooed my own children through the petting line and then toward the door. My oldest two daughters had a middle school dance that night. Inconveniently, the four-year-old’s birthday party was on the opposite side of Indianapolis from where we live, which isn’t a long distance as the crow flies but is a three-day journey with traffic. My kids left with cupcakes and party favors, which in this case were fancy stuffed animals. The girls were elated, but I was less than thrilled. If we get even one more stuffed animal after this, our house will literally explode in a giant plume of cotton. Maybe that was the goal all along. The best parties are actually attacks in disguise.

The weekend showed me just how deficient I am at hosting parties. The closest I’ve ever come to having a theme is letting the kids pick out a color for the tablecloths. I’m not sure if purple counts as a theme, especially when compared with an entire safari. Then again, we have our own animals. We don’t need to hire a guy with a van full of creatures because our home is already a zoo. It’s a bounce house, too. There’s never a point where our walls and floor aren’t shaking. The second story is the best place to practice gymnastic dismounts. One of these days, a kid will come falling through the floor and I won’t be surprised at all. Neither will they. They’ll have a nice soft landing because every surface in our house is covered with stuffed animals, but only if the entire place hasn’t exploded first.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James