All glories to Dave Barry

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna --

 

Get the (birthday) party started

 

TODAY'S PARENTING TOPIC IS: Planning a birthday party for your 2-year-old

child.

 

The first thing you must decide, when planning a birthday party for a

2-year-old, is: Should you invite the 2-year-old? Because a child that age

can put a real damper on a party. And probably your child doesn't really

understand that he or she is turning 2. One of the best things about small

children is that they have no clue how time works. My 2-year-old daughter

believes that everything that has ever happened, including her birth and the

formation of the solar system, occurred ``yesterday.''

 

I have a friend named Helene who made excellent use of this phenomenon when

her children were small. If they wanted to do something that, for whatever

reason, they couldn't do, Helene, rather than argue, would tell them they

could do it on ''Tuesday.'' If her kids wanted to go swimming, and it was

January, Helene would say: ''We'll go swimming on Tuesday!'' And they were

satisfied, because they had a definite answer, even though it actually had

no meaning. (Airport flight-information monitors are based on the same

principle.)

 

Unfortunately, as people grow older, they come to understand the concept of

time, unless they are my wife. (Just kidding!) (Not really!) But most

2-year-olds have no idea what ''2 years old'' means, and would not notice if

you held their birthday party after they went to bed.

 

Another low-stress option is to wait until your child is invited to some

OTHER 2-year-old's birthday party, and when you get there, tell your child

that the party is actually for him or her. (``Look, Jason! Your name is

written right here on the cake! L-I-S-A!'')

 

Of course the foregoing suggestions are intended in a purely humorous vein.

(Not really!) Unless you are a Bad Parent, you must throw a birthday party

for your 2-year-old, and you must invite other 2-year-olds, and THEY MUST

HAVE FUN, even if they don't want to. This is why so many birthday parties

feature rental clowns, even though few things are more terrifying to small

children than a clown at close range. Stephen King based an entire novel on

this concept.

 

Another fun thing that 2-year-olds do not enjoy is organized activities.

Most 2-year-olds are happiest when they are free to wander around in a

non-organized way. So it can be quite a chore to herd a group of them

together for organized birthday fun. But you must do this, or the terrorists

will have won.

 

When our daughter turned 2, we had a big party at our house. That was over a

month ago, and we're still finding cake frosting in unexpected places. (''So

THAT'S why the VCR doesn't work!'') Our house was filled with 2-year-olds,

running, falling, yelling, crying, pooping, etc., each with at least one

adult in pursuit, trying to organize the child. I honestly didn't know who

most of these children were, or how they found out about the party. Maybe

the Internet. All I know is, the organized activity we had for them was:

art. Yes! We invited small children to our house and DELIBERATELY GAVE THEM

PAINT.

 

I believe the reason we did this is that our brains had been turned into

cole slaw by the bouncy castle. A bouncy castle is a big rubber inflatable

thing that you can rent for birthday parties, weddings, congressional

hearings, etc. The idea is that children can climb inside and bounce around

and have a lot of fun, unless they find the bouncy castle to be even more

terrifying than the rental clown.

 

My daughter LOVED the bouncy castle. That was the good news. The bad news

was, the rental company set it up at 8 a.m., six hours before the party

started. Once my daughter realized there was a bouncy castle in her yard,

she had to be inside it, bouncing, at all times, and she felt very strongly

that there had to be a parent in there bouncing with her. So by the time the

guests started arriving, my wife and I had spent about three hours apiece

bouncing our IQs down into the low teens, which is why we thought it would

be fun to give art supplies to 2-year-olds. I'm surprised we didn't let them

drive the car.

 

Of course we also gave them cake, because this is mandatory at birthday

parties, even though historically there is no known case of any 2-year-old

ever actually eating so much as a single molecule of birthday cake. In fact,

as far as I can tell, 2-year-olds never eat anything. I think they nourish

themselves via some kind of photosynthesis-like process that involves the

direct absorption of Play-Doh.

 

In conclusion, holding a birthday party for 2-year-olds is both fun and

easy. All you have to do is follow a few simple steps! I will cover these on

Tuesday.

 

Hare Krishna --

 

your servant, Balarama Dasa