Family Snippets - 18. Almost Perfect

There is something intensely satisfying about an almost perfect kids birthday party.

A perfect kids birthday party is like a perpetual motion machine, or a government that does things properly: an ideal that can be approached but never reached.

Andrew’s fifth birthday came as close as can be expected, unless you decided to substitute the kids with pre-programmed robots. To start with, he only invited three people. As any parent will tell you, the anxiety levels increase exponentially as the number of children at a party goes up. Andrew only invited John, a friend from playgroup, and his two girlfriends, Sally and Linda.

I have to admit that I sometimes wonder if Andrew and Colin have some sort of friendly rivalry going on with their girlfriends. It was different when I was young; boys didn’t associate very much with girls. There was a “yuckiness” about the whole concept. Either the modern generation is a lot more tolerant of gender differences, or maybe it’s because Janine and I have never made a point of distinguishing between boys and girls. The old saying, “Girls are weak, chuck’em in the creek. Boys are strong, like King Kong,” is one that we’d decided we just didn’t need to teach our boys.

Now, while Andrew certainly made impressive progress in their rivalry by not only having two girlfriends at the same time, but also having the nerve to invite both of them to his birthday party, as a neutral judge I’d have to say that Colin is still in the lead. This is not because he’s had more girlfriends than Andrew, but because he’d actually discussed marriage with one of them.

I can still remember the surprise I experienced when I arrived home from work one night, and Colin asked me if Raylene could come for a sleepover at our place. Initially, I thought this was quite innocent, but I started frantically searching for my biology textbooks when he then declared that he loved her. I almost fainted when he added that he’s going to marry her, but they’d decided they were going to wait until they were ten. Once I’d recovered, I had to admire their maturity in wanting to wait four years before they got married, but I still thought they might be a bit young to make such a serious commitment.

I considered the possibility that this was all just Colin’s idea, as he has a very active imagination, but the next day Janine showed me the love notes from Raylene that Colin had brought home, including one that confirmed the marriage plans. I was still wondering what to do when a couple of days later Janine informed me that the marriage was off. Apparently, Colin and Raylene had been discussing their ages, and it turned out that Raylene was a “bigger six” than Colin, which made the whole relationship completely unviable. I’m not sure I understand the logic, but I’m happy with the outcome. Getting married at ten is a bit too early, in my humble opinion.

One of the presents that Andrew opened first thing in the morning was a Hot Wheels track with some sort of swamp monster attacking the cars. Naturally, I had to put it together as soon as it was opened. There is something about complex pieces of engineering brilliance that Janine and the boys naturally turn to me to put together. Little do they realise that while I’m an engineer, I’m a Software Engineer. I can still remember the joke from university: Real Programmers don’t change tyres – that’s a hardware problem. Alas, I don’t think I’m a Real Programmer because not only am I able to change tyres, but I can also put together Hot Wheels tracks. It helps that they’ve developed instructions explicitly for me and others of my ilk – instructions fit for any dummy.

It didn’t take me that long before I’d put the track together. Even when I’d forgotten to do a couple of steps, it became obvious further along in the process and I was able to backtrack and fix my mistakes without anyone being the wiser. At least I hope that was the case.

The boys had a wonderful time playing with it. It appear that the object was to run the cars around the track and have them blow the head off the swamp monster inside a time limit. The sound effects were great, with the monster making smart-arse comments. Colin recognised this:

“Come on, Andrew. Let’s make him mind his manners.”

I had to smile. We’d put in a lot of effort instilling manners into our boys. They can be completely obnoxious at times, but they usually say “please” and “thank you” while making you pull your hair out. We’re still not sure if they correctly understand the phrase, “excuse me,” as it often seems to translate as “shut up, it’s my turn to speak.” However, generally they are polite and considerate.

They were disappointed when we told them it was time to stop playing, but they quickly got ready and headed out to the car. They’d both been to the place where the party was going to be, and were eager to get going.

Andrew had a good time at his party. We held it an indoor playground where they have a massive jungle gym with only one significant design flaw: it’s possible for adults to get in there with the kids.

This ultimately means a group of fathers leveraging themselves through netting, up tunnels, down slides and generally ending up in places where man (especially overweight man) was not meant to go, while being encouraged along with cries of “Come on, daddy!”

It was with a considerable sigh of relief that I collapsed when they announced it was time for Andrew and his friends to go to the party area for a snack and birthday cake. Having a heart-attack from over-exertion at my son’s birthday party would not have gone down well with Janine. I’d probably be accused of trying to attract attention. After all, it was Andrew’s special day, not mine.

He didn’t seem to mind the low number of presents he received, an unfortunate side-effect of only inviting three friends, and the Thomas the Tank Engine ice-cream cake was a great success. That’s just as well, as most of it was still left after the party was finished, so we’ve taken it home to finish off over the next week or three.

There was only one thing that Andrew was disappointed with. One birthday present we were unable to get for him.

“Look, Andrew. Nanny and Gramps have given you a book on space, and Colin has given you a rocket to play with!”

“Yeah!”

He started excitedly flicking through the book, stopping when he got to the page showing pictures of the moon.

“I want to go to the moon,” he said, repeating a comment he’d made a couple of weeks earlier.

I’d tried the Americans, but NASA doesn’t take passengers. I’d rung the Russians, who were interested since I was willing to pay (I had saved up a couple of hundred dollars), but we never got to the point of price negotiations when they had to admit they didn’t currently have a rocket able to reach the moon. I’d even sent an email to Richard Branson, asking if Virgin Galactic was ready to get off the ground, but the timing wasn’t right.

An almost perfect party. Only the trip to the moon was missing.

Maybe next year.