Diary Of A Mrs Dad 8: Party Time
Dude: Those flies are kissing.
Dudina: Maybe they’re trying to find a dance party.
When the kids are young, birthday parties are a big celebration packed with as many people as can fit in the back yard. The drinks flow freely and the gifts are plentiful – all for a baby who has no idea it has shat its nappy, let alone turned one year old. In kindergarten and the early school years, the party competition starts in earnest, as parents enlist the aid of balloon-making clowns, magic-dust-spreading fairies and double-decker gym buses. Luckily for us, McDonald’s parties have been few and far between; one I did attend was full of giant Michelin Man-shaped people who looked so depressed that the place had all the atmosphere of a Centrelink office.
We weren’t capable of competing with the cashed-up parents’ kids’ parties, but once one child has a ‘special’ party, so too does the other one. Dudina had a ‘reptile party’ a few years back: a suitably semi-masculine woman, decked out in her best Steve Irwin garb, passed around reptiles that the children oohed, aahed and squealed over; everyone patted the baby crocodile, stroked lizards and caressed tree frogs. When it came time to have a hold of the snake, the attending dads showed admirable restraint by not going Benny Hill on the whole scenario. Dudina and the Breadwinner, animal lovers both, had the time of their lives – I didn’t see much of the reptiles, as it was the perfect time for the dads to congregate around the party pies, sip beer and discuss sport. Even if you don’t follow it much, sport becomes a dad conversational touchstone because at least then you don’t have to talk about the best pram to jog with or how good your kid looks in OshKosh B’gosh.
The Breadwinner and I are suffering from party burnout by this stage in our kids’ lives, so special parties only happen in multiples of fives.
Dude: That girl’s eyes are so far apart, it’s a five-minute walk for an ant.
The Dude recently celebrated his eleventh birthday with a laid-back party including, for the first time, both sexes, which, by my calculation, puts him about ten years ahead of me at the same age. Previously, he and a couple of mates attended movies (a dad favourite, complete with popcorn, choc-tops and viewing a character-free action film); or played Warhammer, the modern equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons, only with expensive, grotesque (and grotesquely expensive) mini models that require costly paints, which are supposedly unique because they are called ‘gunmetal grey’ and ‘flat orc green’. The Dude and his mates have become interested in girls recently, thanks largely, I believe, to the old man insisting on him going to any school so long as it’s co-ed. I wasn’t having any son of mine stuck behind the eight ball of life, spending his vital younger years being so polite to girls that they say to him the most dreaded phrase in a young man’s life: ‘You’re like a brother to me.’
All the Dude wanted was three boys and two girls to come over, have a few party pies, play the Xbox and go to the park by themselves. The no-adult supervision park play was a big call and had to be sanctioned by the girls’ parents, who become the gatekeepers of innocence when the kids are this age. The boys are too young and naive to get up to much mischief, but I believe there may have been some kissing, as the Dude and one friend were trying to venture into boyfriend/girlfriend territory. (The boy without a girlfriend is obligatory in youth, as no gathering of both sexes is complete without the ‘loose wheel’.)
The trip to the park went without a hitch, and they returned to play in the vacant lot across the road near the railway, as the Breadwinner sent me to the bottle shop to replenish the adult fun juice. When I returned, two policewomen were talking to the kids.
‘What’s going on here?’ I asked in my most fatherly tone, although the effect was undermined by the case of wine under my arm and my bloodied black eye.
The policewoman – with braces and freckles, and looking like an object of Dobie Gillis’s desire – explained that the kids had been playing on the railway tracks when a train approached, so the driver rang the constabulary. Before I could even begin saying my admonishing words, the boys spat out, ‘It wasn’t us, it was them!’ and pointed their youthful fingers of blame straight at the girls. I was amazed that the boys had dobbed on and dumped those girls in a single breathy, terrified sentence. The girls had, indeed, tarried too long on the tracks and were, somewhat reluctantly, apologetic to the policewomen.
None of this dampened the festivities, and the Dude told me later it was the best party he’d ever had. I bet it was, I thought, because not many kids get to tell their classmates about how the cops had been called to their eleventh birthday party.
Breadwinner: I love you more than chocolate.
Dude: I love you more than space and cheetahs.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which ‘four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts’. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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