“You’re very brave,” one of the parents said while surveying the scene — 10 kids at a birthday party. In a bowling alley/arcade/seizure-inducing crazy fun land. Ringed by big screen TVs, retina-scarring lights, howling video games and enough screaming kids to scare away bears.
I shook my head and smiled. No problem-o. I wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth, delusional or just didn’t want to show fear. That she was leaving her priceless child with a man who was on the cusp of losing complete control. That we were a good five minutes away from the riot police being called.
It was a birthday party for my daughter. She just turned 9 on Dec. 26, and this year we decided to throw a shindig somewhere besides our house. Preferably somewhere with concrete walls that could survive a Cat 5 hurricane, or whatever damage 8- and 9-year-old children could cause.
“OK. So, I’m just going to go run a couple of quick errands …” and she didn’t even finish her sentence. She just turned and ran for the door screaming, “Poor delusional fool!”
I wondered if I would ever see her again. And if it was as bad as it seemed. The chaos my wife and I were overseeing.
Let’s see: We had a kid topple backwards over the seat. My daughter dropped a bowling ball on her finger. Another kid had a bowling style that resembled Olympic shot putting. She would launch the ball off her shoulder high into the air. Children would scream, “Incoming!” and scatter for cover until it landed with a “thunk” on the lane.
I bounced around tying shoes and picking up pieces of pizza off the floor and mopping up spilled drinks and explaining why games of chase couldn’t extend down the lanes. Why we weren’t in the arcade already. Why the game offering an iPhone was the world’s biggest ripoff, and why the kid who wanted to win it would be better off investing in Nigerian email scams.
And then … and then! … thanks to the heat or the humidity, or just the universe thinking it was funny, the cakes made up to look like shaggy dogs spontaneously combusted. They came apart. Their layers unpeeled like bananas.
“Oh no!” my daughter said. “The dogs are dead.”
It did appear that way.
But if there’s one thing I appreciate about my daughter, it’s her ability to roll with the punches. She doesn’t panic. She doesn’t freak out. She just shrugs her shoulders, says, “Oh well,” and dives back into the fray. Swollen, bruised finger. Birthday cakes looking like something you find on a bombing range. Complete and utter chaos everywhere. No sweat. Fun to be had. Good friends around. Too much to appreciate to get hung up in trivial things.
Made me appreciate the little girl even more. The young lady she’s turning into. And the amazing 9 years I’ve had with her. What a gift for me. Enough to settle my frazzled nerves at a howling birthday party, even if I wasn’t sure the other parents were ever coming back.