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Mon, May 03, 2010
The New Paper
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Partying with screaming, swashbuckling kids
by S Murali

WE DECIDED to do something special to mark our daughter Tara’s 10th birthday.

So we let her invite her friends over for an afternoon tea party.

How did it go?

Let’s just say that the next birthday of hers that we will handle in a similar manner should come in the year 2021 or thereabouts.

Why?

Have you ever heard a bunch of 10-year-old girls screaming at the top of their voices at the same time?

No? Consider yourself lucky, for I have.

And so have all the poor neighbours in my block, who must have thought that some wild animal had broken loose in a schoolyard. Noise aside, I should also point out the mess they created.

Somebody (and let’s not point fingers at my wife here) decided that a pinata could be a good idea for the party.

So somebody (again, it could theoretically be someone other than my wife) went to buy one.

Now the idea of a pinata, to those unfamiliar with the Mexican party game, is to hang a sweet-filled paper animal in the air and hit it with sticks until it busts open and the sweets spill out.

What somebody, uh I mean we, failed to realise is that there were also a trillion little bits of coloured paper inside this pinata.

And when the pinata burst open, the bits dispersed themselves all around the house, along with the sweets and the kids rushing to get them.

Let’s just say that it has been a week since the party and we are still finding pieces of coloured paper in the house.

Noise and mess aside though, the real reason for my reluctance for a repeat party is the impact it may have had on my five-year-old son.

Now Raul is already used to battling the effects of constant exposure to a posse of females at home.

Suddenly, he was thrust into a sea of them, the screaming 10-year-olds and some cousins who were closer to his age or younger.

At first, it seemed to be going very well, as one of his cousins, who is in the same kindergarten as him, gets along with him like a house on fire.

The dynamic duo were part of the bigger group for all the games and even joined them in the room for the scream fest.

But soon, I noticed something that stopped me in my tracks.

My son and his cousin Ashwini decided to pick up some toy lightsabers and have themselves a duel.

But from the start of the contest, it was clear that there was only one winner.His female cousin, at least four inches shorter, absolutely pummelled him, pinning him in a corner with blade strokes that would make Obi-Wan Kenobi proud.

With a stance that would not be out of place among Olympic fencers, she attacked him relentlessly, pausing only to say sorry every time the blade hit him and he shouted “Ouch”.

I felt so bad that I called a time out and gestured him over on the pretext of examining his sword.

But once they restarted, it was back to the corner, getting hammered by this little swashbuckling girl, who should be seriously groomed for the next Youth Olympics.

Thankfully, after “Ouch” No 23, my son called a halt to the proceedings, probably realising that the pain was overriding the fun of duelling with the lightsabers.
It should be noted that I have not seen him pick up the lightsaber since that day.

So, as you can see, birthday parties filled with screaming girls are literally a double-edged sword.

And until I teach him to wield one like Luke Skywalker, a little break, we will take.
Strong he will be, one day. Parties we will have, then. Ready he will be, for Vader, uh, I mean his cousin.

This article was first published in The New Paper.

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