White people, brown people

This weekend, Maegan and I took Elliot to a birthday party. It was at 1, right smack, dab in the middle of Michigan-Ohio State, so of course it was against my will, but I had to sacrifice for the sake of familial unity. It was this kid's first birthday, and he had over all his little one and two and three year old friends and their parents. I know, the lows to which I have stooped.

All the parents were 26-29 and had exactly 1.5 children. Do you know how weird it is to sit there and watch 12 or 15 couples with children all the exact same age interact? It was damn near one of the eeriest things I've ever seen. How did they all follow an identical life track?

They were all so, so white. Even though Elliot was obviously the cutest baby there, no one told him so, because he had brown hair and brown eyes. They feared him.

Anyway, this is all secondary to what I really wanted to talk about. They had a piñata there. It was a cool little football one. "THAT's what I'm talking about," I whispered to Elliot as we headed outside for the action. I should've known I would be disappointed.

The first thing that was wrong was the air of positive encouragement. "Good try" and "You'll get it next time" are not things you tell a kid when he's going for the kill. He needs to be negatively reinforced: "If you don't quit swinging like a girl, so help me...." Also, the kids didn't even have blindfolds! Where is the sport in that? It's like setting up the feeder 10 yards from your blind, and then shooting the only crippled deer that comes to eat. Sure they were little, but if you don't teach them how to be hardcore now, they'll never learn...

When I was young, my family would get a piñata for any and every celebration. Birthdays, First Communions, Baptisms, Quinces, Easter, graduations... everything. We were piñata pros. When we knew it was game time, all the cousins would run over to the tree and line up, wimpiest to biggest. When it was your turn, you got blindfolded, spun around 10 times, and were given the broom handle. Your parents would yell things like "Pretend it's Juanito's head!" or "It's time to man up!" and off you would go.

The younger kids, of course, did superficial damage, at best. The middle cousins, always having something to prove, would do just enough structural damage to set up us big kids for the kill. Little Frank, who went just before me, would whale his heart out, giving me or cousin Vic the money shot.

POP!

As candy erupted from the eviscerated ninja turtle (or whatever we had that day), the real free for all began. Snatching up candy was a no holds barred affair. You were free to wrestle, push, punch, bite, tear, and claw your way to any free piece - the only rule was that you couldn't steal from someone if they already had it in their hands.

Although the rules sound a bit rough, it really wasn't that efficient to fight someone. Unless you were going for one of the three or four sets of wax lips (the golden fleece of piñata-land), it wasn't worth your energy to initiate physical contact with someone else. Scanning for chick-o-sticks was a much more practical plan of action.

At the end of the day, the rich were richer, and the poor were crying. The big cousins had more candy than we could ever eat, and the younger ones were left with a handful of shitty sweet tarts. Unfair? Probably, but you can't argue with the natural order. At the birthday party on Saturday, we left before they broke the thing (20 minutes, and counting...), but I can only imagine that after it did break, they divided the candy evenly.

Ay, Dios mío...