14 September 2008

The Party

The Boy is turning six so we decided to throw him a party. We figured we would keep it simple, just the neighborhood kids and two other friends. Overall, the party went well but we learned some things along the way. There only seven kids there, but five of them were girls between the ages of five and seven. We have a boy.

1. The purple dinosaur mask is the most coveted by the young female humans in the entire color spectrum of dinosaur masks.

2. The winner of a fair-and-square rock, paper, scissors match is not respected by female-kind. That's simply uncivilized.

3. My wife can come up with awesome comments like, "I don't care who gets the blue cup. Why don't you two go in the bathroom and stay there until you figure it out?"

4. Girls practice fickleness early in life.

Question:  "What kind of ice cream do you want?"
Answer:  "Vanilla."
I turn away. "
No, chocolate."
I nod and turn away again. "
Wait, vanilla."
All this in the space of 8 seconds.

5. Next time colored party favors are involved with masses of little girls (which, in my life, will hopefully be never) there will be only one color. Preferably snot green.

6. Once little girls settle on a balloon color, they like them tied to their wrist so that other conniving, little girls will need blades to remove them from their owner. I offered to tie 40 or so to one girl's wrist just to see if we could get her airborne. She declined, sensing a ruse was involved.

Then there was the, "That's my ice cream," comment. I had to point out to the girls that they were both vanilla and both unopened. That seemed not to matter. The order in which they were presented was paramount. I walked off.

I notified a grandparent who had arrived that their granddaughter would be out in a second after we hammered out an issue involving A) balloon color and B) mask color and without missing a beat she said, "Invited a lot of girls did ya?"

Does everyone know about this besides my wife and I?

Despite all the bargaining over who was getting the purple dino masks, I'm pretty sure we won't see the lasses prowling the neighborhood with them on. The boys on the other hand, will be seen with them on regardless of hue.

Not all oddity occurs among females though:

When everyone was leaving The Boy said, "I'm going to let my balloon go."

I said, "Don't do that buddy. That's a domestic balloon and will never make it on its own in the wild."

He turned away. Humor is lost on the younger set sometimes. He then let it go and then complained that he had no balloon. I informed him that his grandparents were inside and he should go visit with them.

I would like to point out that I read a lot of blogs and was still woefully unprepared for party girlishness. C'mon people. I leave comments. Help me out next time. Oh well, I probably wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it anyway.

Next time we have a party, (a long ways off I hope) maybe we'll keep it to all boys. That way we'll only end up having to repair things around the house.

 

11 comments:

Marinka said...

I'm sorry that I didn't guide you better. Next time, tell your son, "There is a lot of sorrow in the world and Barack Obama canceled his Saturday Night Live appearance, so we're canceling your birthday."

That was hysterical, btw. I love the image of your surrounded by 6 year old girls, trying to dispense ice cream. (That didn't sound weird, right?)

Congratulations on getting the party the hell over with! Time for a drink!

- Cindy - said...

I always picked chocolate and snot green was my favorite color growing up (or ninja turtle green). My little sister would never have acted like that (even if it was just because I would make fun of her until she was really embarrassed). I thank my parents for not raising us to be a girly-girls or the boys to be manly-dudes. I think it makes my little siblings much more fun to hang out with and all of us much more well rounded, even we didn't fit in with all the other kids at that age.

Mel said...

Having only had female offspring, and having raised them to be as non-insane as I could, I mostly didn't think to warn you about this.
But yes. Most little girls, mine on occasion included, are EVIL. The end.

Gucci Mama said...

Ah, little girls. I don't have any, yet, but I was one once. I like myself, certainly, but I was never a big fan of other little girls. Probably because none of them were as pretty as me. And now, I find very few women whom I can stand. Again, I think related to their prettiness. You know, being perfect is not as wonderful as it sounds. Sigh. I am confident, however, that if I have them, I will like my own girls.

In other news, you can't dust drapes, but you can vacuum them. I do this because my husband just will not agree to replacing window coverings in the dining room where three of the four walls are entirely made up of windows once a month. The monster.

Diane said...

My daughter would D.I.E. if a boy was invited to her birthday party! ICK. Other parties are OK but birthdays apparently have separate rules.

tracey.becker1@gmail.com said...

Laughing over here... We've always had girls at parties, but honestly, my own son is so fickle that none of the girls have been able to hold a candle to him! I have found that girls love the crafts I usually have out while we're waiting for the partiers to all arrive. They all made pirate hats at the last party but the boys? Nah. They just wanted to jump off of the furniture and hit each other...

Mike said...

Great post! And sadly, with Maddie yet to have her first birthday, it sounds like I will be living the hell you described every year for the next eighteen!

The Stiletto Mom said...

Oh Jim, I so wish you had emailed me. You know about my princess, I could have helped you. Girls? Are a pain in the you know what. Snot green is actually pretty to them if tied with a pink bow btw...

I think you need to be proud that The Boy is such a ladies man at such a young age, however, you will have many more of these moments in your future sadly.

Vodka Mom said...

That was classic. LOVE the domestic balloon shit.

Sue Wilkey said...

Silly, silly man. NEVER give a little girl her choice of ANYTHING. You have to go with one prize, one color, one flavor.

I will use that domestic balloon line the next time it happens to me.

Anonymous said...

I'm new to your blog but everything you've listed here - right on. The difference between boys and girls is clear. Girls have known this a long time...probably as far back as when they, themselves, were at these parties. Glad you got the chance to learn it too!