You Crazy Bunch of Mothers

If the cops didn’t get called on your Mother’s Day brunch, then you might be hanging around with the wrong mothers.

At least, that’s what I’m told.

I went to a perfectly normal Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday. We had fresh fruit and quiche. I was up in Oregon, visiting my parents and my oldest sister, and our brunch was lovely. I then got on a plane to come home to what I thought was going to be a Mother’s Day tri-tip dinner, cooked by my sons. I came home to something a little different than that.

You see, our good friends down the street hosted a neighborhood potluck Mother’s Day brunch on Sunday morning, and I was thankful for that. I was going to be out of town for the morning, so I was happy my wife and boys would be down having a nice time at our friends’ house. The plan was for them to go enjoy the brunch, then I would get back into town and we’d have dinner all together.

I kinda got the impression the plan was changing when I got to the airport in Portland and started texting my wife and boys about what time I would be arriving. No one texted me back. I had sent a long string of unanswered texts by the time I was in my seat being told to turn off my mobile device or switch it to airplane mode.

I had a text from my wife waiting for me when I landed at 6:00 pm, saying that we were probably going to hold off on cooking the tri-tip for tonight.

I arrived home to an empty house and the sounds of laughter and the pop-pop-pop of street pickleball coming from the other end of our little road. I threw my suitcase in the house and strolled down to what turned out to be one of the most epic Mother’s Day brunches ever held.

It had started at 9:00 am, and was still going STRONG at 7:00 pm. There was a live garage band – courtesy of two slightly intoxicated musical dads with acoustic guitars – along with a pool party, a hot tub party, and a cornhole tournament in progress in the back yard, and a pickleball game in the street in front of the house where the moms playing were required to do shots whenever the total score became evenly divisible by five. (It was a loose rule). A large cheering section in lawn chairs had gathered, and I’m pretty sure some of them had wandered in from other neighborhoods.

I’m not sure what kind of traditional brunch food was served in the morning, but they had been through all of that, then onto lunch, and by the time I showed up the party was knee-deep in take-out hot wings and delivery pizzas. My wife was one of the lawn chair spectators, waiting her turn for another pickleball match, and when she saw me she gleefully told me the cops had been called on them.

Our friends’ house sits at the end of our street, between two tee’s of adjoining streets, so it happens that very few cars ever actually drive past the front of their house. You are either turning off our street before you get there, or you would have come around from the other way if you needed to be on the street at the end of ours.

This low-traffic phenomenon makes it a near-perfect spot for a street pickleball court. When you bring the net out, the court sits lengthwise with the road, up against their sidewalk, so there is a full car-width lane to get past it on the other side if you happen to need to drive past their house. Someone – and no one knows if it was a neighbor, a pedestrian, a motorist, or a member of a tennis league – called the police to complain about the “illegally closed off road,” or the “crazy out of control street party,” or something. No one was really sure, including the cop.

Apparently, the cop pulled up, took one look at what was going on, and just shook his head in the “I can’t believe some idiot wasted my time and the taxpayers’ money to have me respond to a Mother’s Day brunch” kinda way. Before he left, he wished all the ladies a Happy Mother’s Day and dutifully reminded all the pickleballers of the obvious, “try not to get hit by any cars.”

Anyway, the music continued, the pool party raged on, and when the sun went down, the floodlights came out to make sure darkness wouldn’t slow down the pickleball tournament, or the mom’s mid-game shots.

My wife, who isn’t as young as she used to be, tapped out at about 9:30 pm, with over twelve hours of Mother’s Day brunch under her belt. I’m a full five months younger than her, so I was able to make it another fifteen minutes or so before I had to pack it in and head for home.

Anyway, happy belated Mother’s Day to all you wonderful ladies out there doing the hard work! And hey, if you don’t have Mother’s Day plans for next year, I’d highly recommend coming by our street. The brunches are legendary.

In fact, it’s possible that Sunday’s brunch is still going on. I left before it broke up, and I haven’t gone back down to check.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Cinco de Ulysses Patrick’s Day - Repost

Friday was St. Patrick’s Day, a generally festive time for American humans, but a stressful time for the fish of the Chicago area. Can you imagine if your entire neighborhood got painted green overnight? Freaky. Anyway, us humans got “lucky” this year with the “holiday” landing on a Friday, which is certainly better than Thursday last year or Wednesday the year before, but still not ideal.

That’s because St. Patrick’s Day is the Cinco de Mayo of March. Both are on a fixed calendar date, which makes no sense, and we don’t get work off for either of them, which makes even less sense. Both have some amount of green added to the beer, and no one from the holidays’ countries of origin celebrates them. Here in the good ol’ USA, however, we embrace them like they were the Fourth of July or New Years. And much like New Years, no one knows what we’re celebrating or why. But we’re all Irish for one day in March, and we’re all Mexican for uno dia en Mayo.

The overwhelming problem is that the only people who get to celebrate these two “holidays” with any regularity are students. Specifically, college kids and elementary schoolers. The college kids use the days as excuses to party, and the elementary schools use them as excuses to make leprechaun traps, Mexican flags, and most importantly, eat cookies.

Meanwhile, we adults have to wait until March 17th or May 5th land on a weekend before we get to party anymore. Why should the students get to have all the fun? Why shouldn’t the parents get to participate?

We used to have fun on St. Patrick’s Day. We used to drink green beer and actively look for other college kids of the opposite sex who weren’t wearing green so we could pinch them, as is the standard custom.

We used to have fun on Cinco de Mayo. We used to drink Corona with lime and eat discounted tacos by the truckload while wearing giant sombreros, and actively look for other college kids of the opposite sex who weren’t wearing green so we could pinch them, as is the standard custom.

Did we know why we did any of this? Of course not. Did we care that we didn’t know? Of course not. We cared about doing our part to uphold centuries of fake traditions. We cared about beer with the appropriate green holiday additive. We cared about pinching cute members of the opposite sex. We cared.

I’m tired of being left out. I’m tired of not caring. I want to care again. We should get to party, too. It’s only right, since we’re the ones paying for all of this anyway. Why shouldn’t we get these days off work?

Why? I’ll tell you why. Probably because someone still needs to pay for all this, that’s why. But are we going to let that stop us? Heck no! There are plenty of other days during the year we can work. Although, we do already have a lot of holidays…

OK, let’s compromise. We could combine St. Patrick’s Day and Cinco de Mayo into one holiday to minimize the work stoppage but still have some fun. What do you say?

I knew you’d be on board!

Ladies and gentlemen, I officially propose a new national holiday.

We will compromise on the month and have the new holiday in April, since it has always been a travesty that we don’t get April 27th off for President Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday either. We will anchor it around that date but it will need to float, of course, to always fall on a Friday so this party is a three-day weekend. It’s only fitting to include Grant, since he really should be the patron saint of these two holidays anyway. You may not know this, but in addition to being a war hero and a Roman god, Ulysses was a prolific inventor and is actually responsible for creating, among many other things, the taco, green beer, the piñata, and Ireland.

We shall call the new holiday either Dia de St. Mayo Patrick de Grant, or Cinco de Ulysses Patrick’s Day. We can vote on that later.

As far as logistics go, we will simply combine all the current fake holiday traditions into one big three-day weekend of awesome.

The holiday uniforms can remain mostly undefined, but should include the required holiday colors; green, white and red, with an obvious emphasis on green and large sombreros.

Mariachi bands will need to shift their focus a little and include bagpipes and plaid. Irish heel-clicking salsa dancing with be a natural follower to the new groove.

The main holiday beverage will obviously be green Corona with yellow lemon wedges instead of limes to signify lucky gold. Cuervo gold tequila will remain unchanged, since it satisfies both holiday motifs. As an alternative to Mexican tequila, Irish mojitos will be made out of crushed clover and Jameson Irish Whiskey.

Red, white, and green tortilla chips will be served with cabbage salsa, and children across the land will spend the new holiday smacking leprechaun-shaped piñatas filled with gold coin chocolates and corned beef taquitos.

We can work out the rest of the details later. I’m not really sure who’s in charge of new holiday creation over in D.C., so if one of you could forward this on to them, that’d be great.

I’m going to get back to my green Corona.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2023 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Party Like it's 2020

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but that is proving a little harder this year, because 2020 ‘tis not the year of the Christmas party, or any other party, for that matter, except perhaps the communist party, because commies are the worst, and so is 2020.

Chances are, your annual Christmas get-togethers have been torpedoed by COVID, just like your job, your children’s education, your favorite sports, your waistline, and your sanity. Well, that doesn’t mean the fun has to stop! It just means it’s going to be a little different this year.

Here’s how to handle the cancellation of each type of Christmas party.

1) The Annual Extended Family Christmas Party

Look, we’re not going to lie to each other, here. You’re sad about this one, and also a little happy about this one. Yes, you will miss the good food and the five to ten people you were looking forward to seeing, but you will not miss Uncle Eddie cornering you for half an hour to talk about his enlarged prostate. Schedule some cocktail hour Zoom calls with the select few and drink a toast to Aunt Edna’s new hip.

 

2) The Neighborhood Christmas Party

Depending on your neighbors, you may or may not have been looking forward to this one. Never fear, there is good news here for both sides. Schedule a night (weather permitting) for everyone to put some lawn chairs out on their own driveways and huddle around the portable fire pit or barbecue. If you actually like your neighbors, you can then wander down the sidewalks and visit with them from an appropriate social distance. If you weren’t too thrilled about the party in the first place, you can stay on your own driveway near your own fire, pound the eggnog, and politely request that all passersby stay safely on the sidewalk. If they don’t comply, repel them with flaming marshmallows. Ho ho ho.

 

3) The Casual Social Acquaintance Christmas Party

You got put on the guest list for this one years ago when a friend of a friend suggested adding you, and you’ve been stuck reluctantly going to this party full of randoms ever since. Reply to the cancelation notice with “regret” while casually mentioning that you converted to Islam during your recent time in prison, and happily kiss this one goodbye.

 

4) Your Company Holiday Party

This is a blessing for everyone involved. Your spouse won’t have to endure the small talk hell that comes with this dreaded event, and it’s very hard for you to get fired because you had one too many spiced rums and peed in the potted plant at home. As long as the holiday bonus check still finds its way to you, this is a win all the way around. Just remember, when you get drunk at your own house, you won’t have access to the full-size office copier, so you’ll have to take pictures of your butt with your phone and get them to your coworkers via text. Cheers!

 

5) Your Spouse’s Company Holiday Party

Again, this cancellation is a huge blessing. Your spouse won’t have to fret all night about your inevitable embarrassing behavior, and you won’t have to get drunk with all the other uncomfortable spouses who don’t want to be there. Just keep your fingers crossed for that holiday bonus, fire up Netflix, and sip some eggnog on the couch with your honey. And for this one, once the whiskey you put in that nog kicks in, you can take pictures of your butt with your phone and text them to your spouse.

 

6) Your Small Christmas Party with Your Group of Good Friends

This one is not canceled. These are the people you’ve been hanging out with this whole time. Light the yule log and get your jolly on. Merry Christmas, y’all!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2020 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Turning 40

I went to another Human Powertrain Warranty Expiration gathering this weekend. You might know them by the more common term – 40^th birthday party.

I’m not sure when the trend began, but the 40^th birthday seems to be the really big celebration these days. The spouse of the warranty expiree usually throws a huge party. My wife took me on a surprise three-day weekend getaway with friends. I threw my wife a surprise party at our house with about a million people. We had friends who rented out an entire restaurant. It’s crazy!

The parties are fun, but they are a conflicted celebration at best. What are we really celebrating? No one wanted to turn 40. There has never been a 20- or 30-something on earth who has thought, “Can’t wait to turn 40! That will be amazing!”

Every human approaches “The Big 4-0” with the same thought: “Holy %&*#! I’m about to turn 40! How the hell did that happen!?” Every person under 40 at the party is thinking, “better them than me,” and every guest over 40 is thinking, “that poor bastard has no idea what they’re in for.”

That’s because 40 is the year that your entire body stops working like it used to. Your vision blurs. Your hearing degrades. Your feet and knees hurt. Your tendons and ligaments become brittle and weak, as if your muscles are now attached to your bones with those wooden coffee stir sticks. Your hips ache if you sit for too long. You can cripple your lower back for weeks by stepping off the bottom stair a little weird. You can actually hurt yourself by sleeping.

The 40^th birthday is the turning point from “Hey, I’m another year older!” to “Hey, I survived another year!”

Our recent 40-year-old club inductee was treated by her husband to a Mexican cruise to celebrate with friends. We couldn’t make the boat ride, but we were able to attend the follow-up celebration back here, where we all went out bar-hopping. A common theme of 40^th birthday parties is to pretend to be able to drink and dance like you’re still 25. This is called the denial phase.

(Although, no matter how deep you are into the denial phase, or how much you want to be young again, if you’re over 40, you’re still thinking, “Why is it so loud in here? I don’t understand why we need all these flashing strobe lights and that fog machine, and I would really appreciate it if we could turn on a few more overhead lights so I don’t kill myself on those steps.”)

The denial phase is fun, but invariably, the reality phase sets in the next day. Case in point: our bar-hopping adventure ended up at a country dance joint called the Crazy Horse, and they had a mechanical bull.

Do you know why there are no mechanical bulls in places like Starbucks, or McDonald’s, where they don’t sell alcohol?

I do.

Do you know why there are no professional rodeo bull riders over the age of 22?

I do.  

Do you know how sore you are the next day after attempting to ride a mechanical bull at one o’clock in the morning?

I have no idea.

You thought I rode it? Ha! Are you crazy? I’m 46. I know better by now!

The birthday girl woke up complaining that her arm was awfully sore, though. And her butt. And legs. And back… Happy birthday! Welcome to the Over-40 club. It was a fun party.

I’d say I can’t wait for your 41^st birthday party next year, but let’s be serious… nobody celebrates turning 41.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

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Let's Pool our Natural Resources

Our grass in the back yard died a few years ago because of the drought, so we decided to do the only drought-friendly thing that made any sense. We put in a pool. Droughts are caused by not having enough water, so we put in a twenty thousand-gallon water reservoir in our yard. We’re doing our part, California. You’re welcome.

Our front yard grass died at the same time, so I wanted to help even more by putting in a bass pond, but my wife insists there are some zoning issues with that, or something. I think she just doesn’t want an eighteen-foot MasterCraft floating in her front yard. Women, huh?

Getting a pool is not for the faint of heart. Besides choosing which two of the three kids won’t go to college, you also have to endure an eight-week demolition experience, and be prepared to deal with the aftermath.

All pool builders follow the same simple three step process:

Step 1: Remove fence

Step 2: Completely destroy everything between the street and the far corner of the back yard.

Step 3: Fill new pool with water

It looks like an atomic bomb went off in the middle of our back yard, leaving a beautiful pool in the blast crater, and total destruction everywhere else. Our front yard looks like a bad day in Afghanistan.

Once the pool was complete and it was time to deal with the utter destruction of our property, we did the first thing anyone would do. We ignored it and threw a pool party. And then another one. And another. I don’t know how the rich and famous do it. I have been at a never-ending pool party for two and a half weeks now, and I’m exhausted. We filled the new pool with water on June 24^th, and since then the only time I have left the house was to get more beer, wine, and juice boxes.

Do I care that everything in my back yard besides the pool looks like the aftermath of a Vegas strip hotel demolition? Of course I don’t. I have a pool. Please ignore the rubble and enjoy yourselves, folks. Actually, it makes party cleanup quite a bit easier. Instead of picking things up, you can just sweep everything into the rubble pile the next morning and start over.

And it turns out the pool is convenient, also. Not only have none of us had to shower in the last two weeks (again, you’re welcome, California), but the boys have no more arguments for why staying home in the summer is boring. Every time one of them says anything about being bored, I just throw them in the pool. Many times while they’re still in their pajamas. Boredom problem solved, plus as a bonus, laundry done. The drought-friendliness of a pool never seems to end.

The pool can help in emergencies, too. Our Fourth of July party, for example, had a happy ending that could have easily been the other way around if not for the pool. When you accidentally light yourself on fire with an El Diablo fountain firework, a quick dip in the deep end is not only refreshing, but also eliminates a visit to the ER. California’s tax payers can thank me again in that situation, since we had to give up health insurance to afford the pool.

The bottom line is, I would highly recommend getting a pool, especially if you live in a dry area like we do. If we all do our part, we can not only eliminate our kids’ boredom complaints and prevent holiday-related injuries, but we might just be able to end this drought.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to ignore the annihilation of my landscaping some more and get ready for the pool party today.

Cheers!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

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Ten Birthdays

Son Number One turned ten years old last week. Ten! Now, many of you with older or grownup kids are probably saying, “Been there,” and many of you without any kids are saying, “So what?”

I can assure you, when you have children, and the oldest one turns ten, the first thought through your head is, “Holy crap, I’m old!” Then the second thought is, “Holy crap, he can’t actually be ten. He was just five a few minutes ago, and now he’s in double digits?”

Then you do the math again, and then the thought hits you that if he has really been around the house for ten years already, then it’s only eight more years until you have to pay for college. Which, apparently, in parent years is only like six and a half minutes.

Then you faint.

Then your wife revives you by kicking you in the ribs and saying, “Get up, old man.”

You start to come to, muttering, “need… more… money.”

You wife responds, “Tell me about it!”

You get the feeling she didn’t know you were referring to your son.

She has known he was turning ten for a while. That’s because she is a woman and doesn’t forget things like the birthdays of her children. You, on the other hand, being a man, were reminded of his birthday the same way you have always been; by your dentist’s office. They send a nice Happy Birthday email every year.

I actually had quite a few clues leading up to the date, because my wife had already thrown him ten separate birthday parties. Not parties with cakes and hats and noise makers, mind you, but little events labeled as “doing this for his birthday.”

His birthday falls on the Thanksgiving break every year, so every year my wife uses his birthday as an excuse to do things.  We went to the movies “for his birthday.” Before that we had gone to pizza “for his birthday.” And mini golf. And ice cream. And dinner out.

Oh, and Monterey. That’s a whole separate town. It’s a three-hour drive from here. We were going there anyway for a family baby shower, but my wife mysteriously used his birthday as an excuse to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium the next day. I don’t know why we needed an excuse, but there we were, looking at hammerhead sharks and watching bat rays mate “for his birthday.”

And that was all before Thanksgiving. Then the family arrived for Turkey Day, and the aunts and uncles and grandparents spoiled him all over again. I’m pretty sure he thought the actual Thanksgiving dinner was “for his birthday.”

I have mentioned to my wife on a number of occasions that I think we might be spoiling him a little. She sees no issue. I have even brought up the possibility that the other two boys might eventually notice, and possibly resent, the disparity between their birthday celebration and those of Son Number One.

Yes, I said “celebration.” Singular. Son Number Two and Three are two years apart, but they were both born in April, and their birthdays are four days apart. They get a single party between the two of them, with some leftover Easter candy and maybe a cupcake if they’re lucky.

Now, please don’t misunderstand. It’s not that my wife is playing favorites; it’s just that she is sensitive to a certain specific birthday problem; namely, sharing your birthday with a major holiday. She had a rough childhood, birthday-wise. She was born on Christmas Eve.

Sharing your birthday celebration with The Big Guy can’t be easy for a kid in the first place (and I love her parents dearly, and not to throw them under the bus publicly), but one year when the family was having house guests for Christmas, they forgot her birthday completely.

I guess their dentist’s office didn’t have a reliable email service back then.

So, you can see where she could be a little worried about her son “sharing” his birthday with a big holiday. So I cut her some slack when she overcompensates a little with the whole “doing this for his birthday” thing.

I just pity his future wife. He might throw a fit if she doesn’t cook him a turkey with stuffing on his birthday and take him to the aquarium. I’ll give her my in-laws’ phone number. I blame them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shop for a small combination birthday/Christmas gift for my wife. She loves those.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

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The Pinata

As most Americans surely did, we celebrated a Mexican holiday this past Saturday. No one knows what the holiday actually signifies, but we all love Cinco de Mayo. We spent a fun evening at a friend’s house, eating Mexican food, drinking Mexican beer, and watching the kids play in the pool. The pool was American. Oh, well.

My wife was in charge of the Mexican party game, namely, the piñata. Between the five families at the party, we had twelve kids raring to smack the two-foot long paper mache motorcycle in hopes of scoring some free candy.

I say paper mache, but actually it was a store-bought piñata, so it was really a cardboard motorcycle with shredded streamer material glued to the outside. We have neither the patience, the time, nor the artistic talent to make our own piñatas at my house. We also have no piñata party skills, as it turns out.

My wife filled the piñata with candy prior to the party. That was about the only piñata-related step we got right in the whole process. Two other things you need for a piñata are a string or rope to hang it from, and a bat to hit it with. We forgot both of those. The house we were at did not contain any string, so we ended up using a waterski rope from their boat, complete with the rainbow pattern nylon weave and the foam rubber handle. All things considered, it was fairly festive looking, so we were off to an OK start. As far as the bat goes, we couldn’t come up with one of those either, so we used a long, stout, fairly straight stick from the woodpile. That probably worked just fine for the inventor of the first piñata, so it would be fine for us.

We tied the waterski rope through the zip-tie loop on the top of the piñata, threw the rope over the basketball hoop in the backyard sport court, and we were ready to go. The first kid in line picked up the authentic piñata stick and hit the cardboard motorcycle fairly gently, which immediately broke the zip-tie, sending the candy-filled Trojan horse to the ground. All twelve kids rushed forward to pounce on it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! You have to wait until the candy comes out,” said my wife.

We pulled the piñata out from under the pile of children and threaded the waterski rope through the cardboard opening that the zip tie loop had previously been in. We strung it back up on the basketball hoop and let the first kid have another crack at it.

He made very slight contact again and ripped the rope right out of the top of the piñata. It hit the ground again, and this time some candy spilled out with it. When we retrieved it from under the pile of screaming, candy-crazy children again, we no longer had any attachment point for our rope. We could have prevented two injuries and a lot of near misses and adult stress and strife if we had just stopped right there and poured out the rest of the candy onto the ground. Unfortunately, we were determined to keep going.

Not having any place to tie off the rope, we simply hog-tied the entire piñata with the rope, wrapping it around and around the body of the cardboard motorcycle until we were sure it would not come loose and hit the ground again.

The second kid in line hit it so hard, he put a hole right through the middle of it and sent half the candy spraying across the ground. He threw the stick down and dove for the candy, along with the other eleven miniature candy fiends.

Hmm… This doesn’t seem right. How come he got such a good piece of it? Wait a minute… We’re supposed to be working the rope, moving it up and down to make it harder to hit! We forgot that part.

The third kid got up to the plate and swung for the fences, expecting an outcome similar to the previous batter. At the last second, but for the first time that night, I yanked the rope and pulled the piñata up and out of the way of his monster swing. He was so prepared to hit the candy-filled target squarely, that upon missing it unexpectedly, his momentum spun him around 720 degrees, and he landed face-first on the concrete. He came up crying, holding tight to an injured thumb that had taken the brunt of his spinning fall.

Whoops. Our first piñata injury. I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. Come to think of it, why did that happen? Why are they swinging like they’re up to bat trying to hit a home run? Wait a minute… I think we’re supposed to spin them around first to get them dizzy and off balance so they can’t get so set before the swing…

We spun kid number four, and he looked a little dizzy, but he still teed off on the thing. He knocked the front wheel of the motorcycle off at such a high velocity that one of the dads took a Jolly Rancher in the face hard enough to put him down, tragically spilling much of his Corona.

Wait a minute... I think we’re also supposed to blindfold them…

Kid number five stepped up to the piñata with a blindfold on, and after being properly spun around to disorient her, she was our first contestant of the night that reminded us all of a proper piñata at-bat. She had that awkward, drunken sword wielding swing of a slightly disoriented blind person, but she still managed to make pretty decent contact with the moving target.

Kid number six took a wild swing and made solid contact sending more candy flying. As the horde of children rushed toward him, he proceeded to take another cut at it, narrowly avoiding decapitating two of the kids. He was in the middle of a third swipe as my wife, yelling “NOOOOOOO” like a slow motion action film star, came diving across the group of children, trying to save them from certain piñata-stick death. She came within mere inches of taking the fast moving stick in the teeth as she tried to pull the kids back away from the piñata-crazed seven-year-old’s swing radius.  

After she got done chastising our oldest son for almost killing half the kids at the party, and his own mother, she declared in a rather loud and frantic voice the new rule of, “Everyone back ten feet and nobody moves!!!”

By the time kids seven through nine were done, the piñata had been hit so many times, I wasn’t sure there was any candy left. There really wasn’t much piñata left. It looked like it had spent all day on an artillery range. The only thing keeping it from falling to the ground in eight small pieces was the fact that it was completely enveloped in a spider web of waterski rope.

Why is this thing taking such a beating? This still doesn’t seem right… These kids are like piñata savants. No one is missing…

Kid number ten walked unsteadily toward the plate. He was obviously dizzy, but he was squaring up nicely on his target. When I yanked the rope and pulled the piñata straight up in the air, his head snapped up to follow its movement…

They can see through the blindfold!

The stretchy shirt we had been using as a blindfold, when finally tested by my wife, was found to be less than blinding. In fact, she said she could see really well through it.

Whoops. Either all the kids were in cahoots and keeping it quiet, or we really didn’t do a good enough job of explaining what a blindfold was and what it was supposed to accomplish.

Either way, from a how-that-whole-thing-was-supposed-to-work standpoint, it is safe to say that we universally failed at piñata.

Our failures only seemed to matter to us, however. The great thing about kids is they never knew the difference. As far as they were concerned, the piñata was a great success. They all got a bunch of candy, and they all got to hit something with a stick. Two things kids love.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!