A couple of days ago we celebrated our friend Anne’s birthday and today our neighbor’s kids are having a party. Anne is in her 80s and the neighbors are probably 3 or 4. We went to a favorite restaurant to celebrate with Anne; the kids have a blow-up bouncy house on their lawn.
I don’t remember our kids having anything fancy like a bouncy house on their birthdays but I remember they usually had a party of some kind. One year Claire came up with a Cookie Monster costume and one of our neighbors dressed as the Cookie Monster as a surprise for the kids. I’m not sure where she got the costume but one of Cookie Monster’s eyes kept falling off… one of the kids kept saying it wasn’t the real Cookie Monster, there was a man inside…
I think having the Cookie Monster was about as fancy as we ever got… mostly the kids just showed up and with any kind of luck, we tried to play some games, the kids opened their presents and everyone got cake and ice cream.
When I was a kid, you just had a party. Your friends came, maybe played a game or two, had some cake and left. There were no “themes” for parties — if you had a birthday party, it was a birthday party…. just like everyone else had. I remember one time when my mother (who may have been ahead of her time} decided on a cowboy “theme” for my birthday. She sent out hand-made invitations inviting everyone to a roundup at the “Lazy J” Ranch. She even made a sign over the driveway, identifying our house as the Lazy J Ranch. Everyone was supposed to wear western attire and we were to play Cowboys and Indians (that was a popular game back then.) Well, of course, no one understood it… no one wore “cowboy” clothes, or brought their “guns” or “bows and arrows” — because, well because it was a birthday party. You only wore birthday party clothes and played birthday party games at a birthday party.
As usual, there’s no real point to this entry… I just happened to remember my roundup party at the Lazy J Ranch, when I noticed the activity next door. Birthday parties, like everything else, have changed — probably for the better.
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