Now, We Are Six

When I turned six, my friends gathered in our backyard, in Echo Park. We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, walked on Hawaiian Punch Juice can “stilts” which my mom & dad made, and ate “baked by mom” cake with frosting that filled-in the imperfect surface caused by the imperfect oven. It was a FUN party. *********************************************************************************************************************** I remember defending my friend Kitty Cooper because some of my other guests laughed when I opened her present: a pale blue wooden clothes hanger with a bouquet of roses painted on it. It was wrapped in plain white tissue. I loved that hanger. Kitty and her mama Emmy had made it for me. Maybe it wasn’t as spiffy as a set of brand new Pick-Up Sticks, or as impressive to them as a Mr. Potato Head kit (we used REAL potatoes in those days), and it wasn’t as popular as the game of “Cootie,” - which was also a popular BD gift in 1954. I loved all the gifts, but that hanger was something I that I held onto long after the pick-up sticks were scattered or snapped in two, and the plastic bits stuck into a potato forgotten under the bed were all gooshy and turned black, and all the Cootie parts were lost, or the plastic bodies cracked due to "Cootie Fights" we staged with those brittle Bake-o-lite plastic creatures. in those days, all the girls wore dresses, all the boys wore slacks. I don’t remember whether or not we gave away “party-favor bags.” I do remember that, as was usual, the adults at the party were drinking stinky drinks and paying very little attention to us kids. *********************************************************************************************************************** When our first born daughter turned six, she had recently joined a new (to us) school community, and all the kids from the class were invited to our house in Sherman Oaks. A friend helped me make frilly, elasticized red and white polka-dot clown collars and cuffs as part of a clown-kit party-favor for each child to take home. It was a fun, if late-night and exhausting, community project. It was somewhat tinged by OCD behavior, on my part. I wanted everything to be “perfect” - whatever that was. At some point, realizing how skewed my values were, I vowed not to push my children away ever again, in order to fulfill a self-imposed deadline and standard of what birthday party favor bags “should” include. Boys and girls both wore pants. No alcohol was served at our Circus Party. *********************************************************************************************************************** When our granddaughter D turned six, she had been reading Encyclopedia Brown detective novels for about a month. Her love of the characters and their astute solving of mysterious cases dictated the theme of her party. Via the internet, her mama purchased quantities of small magnifying glasses and flashlights, super-cool invisible ink pens with attached black-light decoders, small pads of paper for keeping notes - emblazoned with stick on labels Gran'Pun printed up from a design D's dad conceived, featuring the adapted cover of an Encyclopedia Brown book, “The Case of Devlyn’s Sixth Birthday," and one lollipop decoder ring - everything a young detective might need to solve a case. D’s dad got hold of realistic looking “Evidence Bags” into which the birthday girl’s Auntie Sid, Uncle Mister Grady Pants, and Gran’Pun and I (Gra’Moose) stuffed 24 sets of the above listed items, while Mama Mosa finished baking a red-velvet sheet-cake for forty. The cake had an edible copy of the same adapted book jacket! Again, it was a community effort. The party favor bags were a big hit for all the kidletts leaving the very successful Swim Party at D’s dad’s house. All the kids wore swimming costumes and sunscreen. No alcohol was served at this Swim/Detective Party this year. That’s one reason for the party’s success. Children were watched, cherished, and kept safe. There was also an entertaining magician doing goofy, heart-warming magic, which required ALL the children to participate, and it made the over thirty set laugh heartily. Gran’Pun is the BEST magician I know, and the biggest kid. *********************************************************************************************************************** Recently, I updated my computer. It seems I've lost some of the familiar formatting options which used to appear on Blogger.com. If this piece looks differently formatted to you, you're not alone. Anyone out there know how to reinstate choices in font size? Make the site recognize paragraph spacing? Include photos? Lemme know, please! Thank you!