I am in my best-mommy-spirits right now after dropping my son off at his first day of eighth grade this morning. You know that September Glee we mothers become infected with? I feel like I slept with a hanger in my mouth because I have a real toothy perma-grin.

I had the “pleasure” of attending my niece/Goddaughter’s first birthday party last night. I confess I truly am one of those people that breaks out in a sweat and begins mumbling in an incoherent panic and jumping at loud noises like a war veteran when too many small children are in the same enclosed space as I am. I swear it’s the honest truth that there was one moment last night when one of them was having her balloon angrily confiscated by a red-faced parent, while another dumped an entire glass of soda onto his lap and yet another one swallowed wrong and began coughing and gagging in a way that made me certain we were going to see vomit before the night was out… All simultaneously.

Add two very big very friendly dogs to the mix and I was a complete nervous disaster that teetered precariously on being rude in manner and there were several trips outside for “fresh Air”. Luckily my family understands this about me and they have a lot of grace for me. (Thank you everybody. I mean that).

I waited the obligatory two and a half hours and then slipped my sister-in-law a twenty to make up for forgetting to stop for a gift and fled somewhere between cake and presents dragging my husband and son along behind me out the door like we were making a quick getaway from the scene of a crime. (Sorry I didn’t say goodbye, Grandma).

I absolutely love my sister-in-law, Amanda. She is one of the best parents I know for her saintly level of patience and gentleness married with a totally natural laid-back energy that still somehow manages to be attentive. She is awesome. So I completely declare her exempt from the problem I am about to address:

The American Child’s Birthday Party.

I’m just going to come out with it. Come on parents. What the heck is going on? It’s getting out of hand.

I was told once by my pest control tech to stop tossing my old stale food out in the bushes for the city squirrels. I flippantly asked why not? I’m not going to eat it. He proceeded to explain that squirrels will scavenge for themselves and live a perfectly content life. Once you start to feed them they will soon begin expecting it. And then after awhile they will demand it. They will angrily show up at your door to solicit what they now view as their dues. They can even break into your house by chewing right through the walls!

I stopped feeding the squirrels.

But this, my friends, is the very pattern I have seen in many American children who have been infected with the American Child’s Birthday Party. Also known as Overfed Squirrel Syndrome. And it is not pretty.

The following is a true story (though names have been changed).

 

Opening scene:

An outdoor park gazebo. A small child of one year old exactly is sitting on her mother’s lap. The child is our neighbor Jane Howard’s one-year-old daughter Rosie and is one of those kids that I feel guilty about thinking ugly every time I glimpse her large bulbous forehead looming over tiny mud-brown beady eyes.

Rosie’s unreasonably large fat rolls have rendered her almost completely immobile up to this point, foretelling a possible future of health-compromising overindulgence that will likely surprise poor Jane one day as if she never saw it coming. Jane appears completely oblivious to the frightening developmental delay, seeming unconcerned that her one-year-old has not yet made one move to even scoot toward an object of desire, let alone begin to crawl. I feel shamefully judgmental whenever I am in her presence and sometimes end up giving her strange and unusual compliments about Rosie’s complexion or suspected mental clarity to ease my guilt.

My husband is beside me, chatting merrily with Bruce Abernathy, one of our other neighbors, whose long and painfully detailed stories about lawn care have the ability to make me fabricate lies about places I have to be. As long as Jesse distracts him and his attention isn’t guided my way I will be fine at this close proximity, but I am peripherally aware of him at all times, like one might be of an approaching Jehovah’s Witness. Though I feel like I am slowly dying of boredom when lassoed in by Bruce, Jesse seems to greatly enjoy these mundane talks which include the finest weed killers available, the most effective ways to handle groundhogs, and the best times of day for watering, including preferred sprinkler system choices. Sometimes Jesse even appears to seek out an encounter with Bruce, which never ceases to baffle me.

I am busily pretending to be interested in a flock of Canadian geese that are waddling around about thirty feet away. This is one of my main defense strategies, to appear very interested in something far off. I’ve found that few people will bother to interrupt the deep thoughts of someone who is staring toward the distance in contemplation or wonder. Unfortunately, those that are willing to do so tend to be the most arduous to interact with, so sometimes this plan backfires.

I suddenly get the image of Harold Winkle, the sixth grade science teacher, who is currently hovering near the drink cooler on the other side of the gazebo, wandering over to give me a twenty-minute lesson on the mating patterns of Canadian Geese. I quickly avert my gaze from them. Which is too bad because a boy of about seven was slowly approaching from a distance with a long stick and I make a mental note to check back in a few moments to see how that turns out.

Rosie is strapped into her highchair now and her arms and legs are making the only small movements she is capable of in her excitement: twirling at the wrists and ankles and flailing slightly, but not much. Like a blood-swelled wood tick. She is surrounded by a hoard of balloons that could carry a normal sized one-year-old away. Every couple minutes or so a gust of wind sends the balloons flapping and one of them hits her in the face.

I glance back over at the stick-wielding boy and find a moment of pleasure in first watching the geese hiss at him like wild cats as he pokes the stick in their direction. And then in hearing his mother yell at him from a distance: Oliver! What are you doing?! Those things are dangerous! From my perspective Oliver looks like the dangerous one.

My attention returns to the neighborhood children, aged about two to eleven, that surround us, in the swirl of rising chaos groups of them seem to generate. my son, seven years old, is among them and contributing. As the mayhem escalates, Rosie begins to look a little concerned and slightly frightened. She glances up at her mother for security.

Jane smiles at her, a very creepy overly huge smile with a lot of teeth, widening her eyes as if she is trying to say look how much fun all of this is! But it kind of comes out as yes even I am acting strange and you may not be safe anymore. Rosie’s giant brow furrows, ape-like.

Then Walter, Rosie’s father, approaches with a cake the size of a dinner plate, adorned with its customary burning candle that won’t stay lit in the wind. For a length of time wildly out of proportion to the importance of the task, Jane and Walter coax and coddle the reluctant flame before finally accepting defeat, thank God, and presenting the cake to her unlit. Instead of removing the candle, however, they leave it standing there sadly, in the center of the pink confection, like a singed bald disappointment.

One by one, as Walter and Jane lead, everyone begins to sing the Happy Birthday song and Rosie’s face twists in horror as she tries to decide whether or not she should cry. When she hears her name in the chant, she lets loose and starts wailing. I imagine her thinking: This is it. This is the end. They’ve been fattening me up all this time just to bring me here today… kill me… and then eat me.

But when Walter sets down the cake in front of her, she stops crying. She looks back and forth between them, confused. Up to this point her food has always been presented in carefully cut-up pieces or crackers the size of her hand (even if far too many of them). And here was this monstrous pink thing that she had no idea what to do with.

Walter produces a video camera as if from nowhere and both parents now look on in gleeful excitement at the prospect that their child will lunge for the cake. Their faces fall in disappointment when Rosie regards it with suspicion.

Finally, Jane takes her child’s hands and plunges them both into the cake like a sadistic masochist. Rosie, greatly shaken by this unexpected move, looks horror stricken. This entire episode seems to be a shocking turn of events that she never saw coming during the previous safe and predictable twelve months of her life. She begins to cry a little bit again, her hands held out before her in fright, covered in pink frosting. But Jane wants to convince her this is something she desires. She begins to shove one of Rosie’s hands toward her mouth. Rosie resists but Jane overpowers her. Panic turns to confusion and then turns to realization, as Rosie tastes the sweetness. A long moment of thinking takes place before a frenzied look crosses her face and she dives back into the cake with both hands.

Jane and Walter cannot contain their glee and the video camera is reengaged with jubilant vigor. Now Rosie is shoving fistfuls of the pink and white mass of glutinous sugary wonder into her tiny mouth (and all over her face) and her beady eyes are widening by the second, half with the pure bliss of taste and half with the sugar that is hitting her bloodstream like a vial of crack.

The other children crowd around her, eyes wide as well, but theirs with envy, until their attention is directed toward a swiftly appearing platter of cupcakes. Jadon glances at me momentarily before he grabs a white one and tentatively licks the top of it a few times before taking a small bite. We keep sweets like this to somewhat of a minimum in our house, but clearly this is not the way Jane and Walter feel. Because, after Rosie has been allowed to eat the amount of sugar capable of killing a very small animal and making a medium-sized one violently ill, her body begins to shut down into a coma-like state as she slumps over in her highchair and starts to nod off like a narcoleptic nursing home resident.

Jane cleans her up with wet wipes while repeatedly shaking her alert so she will not miss the next segment of the fun. Within moments, parcel after parcel of brightly colored wrapped bags and boxes, most of which are larger than Rosie herself, are then presented. The next thirty minutes are hard to watch. It is like seeing prisoners of war being tortured for information. The girl is clearly quite miserable but Jane couldn’t be more oblivious. Rosie is still being shaken awake and ushered through Jane’s overdramatic exclamations and psychotic faces as she opens and presents to Rosie a pile of merchandise that would satisfy a Hilton. All the while the poor child looks as though she couldn’t possibly want any of it more than a nap.

I, an innocent bystander, fighting the urge to intervene on behalf of the victim, risk a side-glance toward Bruce who is chatting away about turf builder as Jesse nods agreeably. Bruce catches my eye and lifts his can of Mug Root Beer toward me in hello. And for some reason he doesn’t look quite so frightening anymore. The scariest person in my vicinity has suddenly become Jane Howard.

Children are born easy to please. It’s parents that ruin that. Celebrate your kids. But don’t give them Overfed Squirrel Syndrome.

 

 

 

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