Seven-Year-Old's Party

Seven-Year-Old Birthday Party

I had many bad parenting moments, but the absolute worst was the birthday party we had for our son when he was in second grade. I was an aide working in the library at the same grade school our children attended. I thought I knew all his classmates well enough to invite twelve little boys over to our house.

My writing was more legible than our almost seven year old son’s penmanship but it took me several evenings to hand-write all the cute invitations. We decided to save money on stamps, so I asked our birthday boy to hand them out to his friends right there in school. I had carefully written each boy’s name clearly on the envelope in nice big block letters so he could give them to the right child.

The day of the party, I walked to their classroom just as school was getting out. All the little boys were smiling and excited to be going home with us. The bunch was dancing and jumping around me. As we got outside the school building, one little boy, Johnny said, “I don’t have a gift for him.”

Each one of the boys was holding a wrapped gift in their small hands, eager to go to a party.

“That’s okay,” I assured him. “Just come to our house to have fun with us.”

He smiled happily because he could come to the party anyway. I felt like the Pied Pepper walking them several blocks to our small ranch house.

I had several games planned: musical chairs which we lined up in our living room, pin the tail on the donkey in the hall, Bozo buckets and Simon says. The excited screaming boys were a handful for just me. Why hadn’t I asked at least one mother to help me with the wild party goers. These boys were not the well-behaved children I had seen in their classroom. Even my own children joined in the chaos and screaming. All these games should have kept them busy for a couple hours, but the uncivilized little boys were so wound up and excited, they went through the games way too fast. I glanced at the clock. Time was slowing down.

With a sinking sensation, I thought, okay, let’s move on to something else to entertain them. Next, I had the birthday boy open gifts. Each boy was so excited when his gift was being opened that he yelled out, “That’s from me.”

Birthday boy didn’t even bother to read the cards. He ripped through the wrappings so fast that even the gift process didn’t take very long. Soon the little monsters were flinging wadded up handfuls of wrapping paper at each other.

I decided to feed them next. We had hot dogs and popcorn. But the boy barbarians thought it more fun to throw the popcorn at each other. It ended up all over the living room carpeting. I couldn’t believe I had actually cleaned the house for the untamed brutes.

The day before, I made a birthday cake that looked like a pizza. The summer before, I had learned how to make a dried frosting at Wilton cake decorating classes. I spent the entire day before the party, making frosting that looked like the red tomato sauce, orange cheese, white onion rings, green peppers, and bumpy brown sausage. It took me all day to make that difficult complicated cake. I’m glad I got a photo of it, for the untamed monsters gobbled it up in minutes and then they were on a sugar-high.

After a couple long hours of entertaining the beasts by myself, my husband finally got home from work. He let out a gasp as he saw my rumpled appearance. His first spoken question was, “What did they do to the house?”

I don’t blame his response. With popcorn and wrapping paper all over the couch, chairs and carpet, it looked like a tornado hit our home.

Exhausted I said, “Let’s take them home.”

He agreed. We piled the boys in the back of our family car and started driving everyone to their own houses while the boys screamed songs at the top of their lungs.

Johnny happened to be the last home as we circled through our neighborhood. He lived in an apartment in town. I walked him inside his apartment building, and up two flights of stairs. He showed me to his front door. I rang the door as he stood politely next to me with red and green frosting smeared around his lips.

 His mother answered. She took one look at us and grabbed Johnny. Clutching him to her chest, she hysterically screamed, “Oh my God. Where have you been?”

With a tremor to his voice, he said, “With her.” He was pointing an accusing finger my way.

“He was at our house.” I answered. I tried to smile past the dry lump that was forming in my throat.

With flared nostrils she yelled, “I was frantic when he didn’t come home after school.”

Her voice made me take a small step backward. “He was at our birthday party,” I tried to explain as my mouth went drier. This wasn’t going well.

She planted her feet wide and thrust her chin at me. “I called the police when he didn’t show up.”           

My heart raced. I had a vision of my picture, the grade-school aide,  on a police-wanted poster. Adrenaline was shooting through my body as I tried to find the right words to explain myself. After much discussion we learned that Johnny had never taken his invitation home. It was still sitting in his desk at school, so his frantic mother never knew anything about the party. Oh, that was entirely my fault.

Before I got charged with kidnapping, I apologized over and over to her.

Sometime later, I felt a little faint as I collapsed into the front seat of our car.

My waiting husband immediately asked, “What took so long to drop a kid off?”

I was gasping for air as I tried to explain the scenario that had unfolded inside. I ended with a moan. “Let’s get out of here.”

We never threw another children’s party again. To this day, I’m really sorry I scarred her so badly.