Take last weekend, for example. It was Tommy's 9th birthday, and since he turned 7 two years prior, we had told him he had graduated from the big party shin dig. Now don't get me wrong, I don't take pride in skirting on my maternal desire and obligation to make the boys' birthdays as memorable as they can be. But when you have 4 of them, multiplied by 7 (this being the official cut-off age, as decided by yours truly), that's 32 all out parties. That means personalized home made invitations, planned activities around a planned theme, topped off with all the happy guests going home with their special party favors.
You can imagine, one can get burned out pretty quickly. Jeffrey will be lucky to make it to his 6th birthday carefully orchestrated to the nth degree. After that, the birthday boy is allowed to have one or two friends over to play, perhaps go to a movie.
So Tommy knew this already. We even practiced the first-time event last year. But as this year's birthday drew closer, he kept remarking how he wanted so many kids over for "his party" and that he wanted to do XYZ. How quickly they forget, these fortunate children.
Backtrack to the last day of November. Tommy is throwing a Tommy tizzy, insisting that he simply "had to hand out his birthday invitations for his party that was 2 days away". The school bus will be arriving in less than a half hour.
I sit down at the computer, shooting an e-mail to G to make sure we were both on the same page. Tommy was telling me G told him he could perhaps have some friends sleep over, which was the complete opposite from what G and I had discussed the very day before. After we clarify and Tommy finally accepts the terms of his party handed to him, I whip up some invitations and print out 5, four to be given to 4 friends, one to keep on hand. "Cam isn't going to be happy when he finds out about it," Tommy declares, since I told him he was lucky to be getting to invite 4 friends, when it was always supposed to be just one or two. He was told to choose his four best friends and I explained to him that sometimes that is how things go and we are forced to make difficult decisions all through life. And besides, he wasn't invited to Cam's party, which I heard was no small event, and that perhaps Cam had to choose like Tommy had to choose, and unfortunately we don't all make the list.
Tommy plans to give out his invitations at school to James K., James S., Emery, and Kyle. The gathering will take place on Saturday and they are invited to arrive at 12:30 and go home at 4:30. They are also invited to bring their presence, but not presents. We didn't want them to feel obligated to rush out during the height of the holiday season to buy a last minute birthday gift for a last minute planned party.
The boys start arrving Saturday afternoon, tossing a football around outside. I leave to take Christopher to his wife's house (a classmate who apparently has declared him as her husband) for a playdate, and when I return, G is complaining that he will never do this again, and it is more than we bargained for, and why are there 5 kids anyway when there are only supposed to be 4? "There are only 4," I tell him. "He handed out 4 invitations on Thursday."
"No, there are 5," G tells me. I go downstairs where the boys are and count heads. He's right. There is an extra kid. He must have arrived when I was gone. And not to my surprise, it is Cam.
The boys come upstairs for pizza and I take an opportunity to pull Tommy into another room to question him about Cam's presence. He insists he didn't tell him about the party, that Cam just showed up. "You didn't just give him a verbal invitation?" I demand. "Because I wouldn't put it past you and I just need to know because why else would he be here? Did somebody else say something to him?"
"No, I swear Mom. I didn't tell him. His mom just dropped him off." I don't believe him and am determined to get the truth before the party is over.
I had promised the boys I'd take them hiking on the trail, so after pizza, we head off for our hike. Joey and Jeffrey want to come along, but I have to return a muddy Jeffrey to G after he doesn't make it across the swamp and falls. Probably for the best, since he'd slow us down anyway. At various times along the path, I question the boys individually, asking casually if Tommy had given them an invitation. They all give me the same story, that they got invitations, Cam included. I am completely puzzled; how can 5 boys receive an invitation when I only sent Tommy off with 4 to distribute? Somebody is not telling the truth and surely, it has to be Cam. Perhaps he and Tommy conspired up a story to get him to join the party and they are sticking with it like glue.
We return back home and it is close to 3 PM. The boys are warming up in the living room, and Cam's mom arrives. I don't even wonder why she is here so early, because I figure she didn't really know the exact time of the party anyway since Cam must have given her the verbal invitation just as Tommy had to him and she is here to get him because she figures he has been here long enough.
We haven't yet had the cake, so I herd the boys into the kitchen to sing a quick 'Happy Birthday' and have cake. "Am I here too early?" Cam's mom asks. "The party ends at 3:00, right? One to three?"
Here is my chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. "No," I tell her. "It ends at 4:30. You know, Tommy gave out four invitations and I've been asking all the boys who didn't get the written one, but the verbal one, but they all insist they got an invitation."
"Right. We got one. It has balloons on the front of it. 1 PM to 3 PM."
And suddenly, I realize the boys actually were telling the truth, even Tommy. "No. Tommy's invitation didn't have balloons on it."
"Oh my God. I could have sworn it had Tommy's name on it. I even called to confirm Cam would be there. I brought him to the wrong party."
I know she feels like a complete idiot, as I certainly would if I was in her shoes, so I try to downplay it, finding it comical, actually, that things turned out as they did. "I think it's kind of funny, actually."
"I'ts not funny, because he's here and he just missed the party he was supposed to be at. But I didn't think anything of it because all the boys were here when I dropped him off." Understandably so. And it also explains why Cam was a half-hour later arriving than everybody else.
After they leave and the party is long since over, I wonder what the odds are of such an occurrence. Tommy got to have Cam at his party after all. And some poor kid who thought Cam was coming to his party got stood up. Some other Tommy, perhaps. And none of the guests got the toy G had gone out to buy earlier because we were one short, expecting 4 kids instead of 5.
So what have we learned from this ordeal? It is always good to buy one extra party favor, just in case. Kids don't always lie, even when we think they do. Never give in to changing the original rules of the game because anything can happen. Just about anything.
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