Brad and I spent an enjoyable Saturday afternoon attending a two-year-old's birthday party. We were lucky enough to score ring-side seats for the gift unveiling. My great nephew, Brooks, regarded his mountainous pile of presents with a practiced nonchalance and blue-tinged lips. He'd spent the bulk of his time, thus far, taking systematic sips from abandoned half-filled Hugs. Those barrel-shaped juice containers are a sure hit at any social function. When he wasn't sucking on second-hand straws, Brooks was busy taking swan dives into the chip bowl. With some parental navigation, Brooks approached the tower of teetering toys accompanied by a tribe of tots.
For those of you with limited experience with pint-sized people, they can be very entertaining when viewed from a safe distance. Why no one has developed a soap opera drama based on this demographic is beyond me...oh wait...I forgot "Toddlers & Tiaras" and that "Honey Boo Boo" kid. All the emotions lurk right on the surface. Jealousy. Selfishness. Territorial rage. A milk-carton shaped box of goldfish crackers was wielded as a weapon. A three-foot tall Superman figure was hijacked and then, to our horror, molested. Insincere apologies were forced from these four-and-under felons while misdemeanors were handled via distraction and re-direction.
As closed captioning was not provided during this particular program, Brad and I took it upon ourselves to add our own subtitles. Brooks apparently bridled a bit when his friend from babysitting showed up in an out-of-context fashion. Brooks's worlds were colliding and he was having none of it. Brooks to "friend": "Back off, Bee-otch! Don't let the door hit ya on the way out." One poor kid was unintentionally taunted throughout the unwrapping by a soothing adult, "I know, honey. You like Batman, don't you? But that's Brooks's," and "You like Superman, I know, but that's Brooks's." His subtitled response: "If you want to be helpful, how about you shut up and help me load some of this s*%t into the trunk of our car. Brooks is hyped-up on the Hugs...he'll never know." Brooks himself would have won the award for best subtitled quote when he opened up a box of clothes. The adults broke into spontaneous applause while Brooks just looked bewildered and thought, "Clothes? Really?This is bulls*%t." I had no idea that preschoolers were so potty-mouthed.
We left the party reluctantly. But fearing for our safety, Brad wanted to put some distance between us and the scheduled pinata bashing. Compared to the stash of deadly weapons that Brooks received in the form of hockey sticks, golf clubs and plastic baseball bats, our put-it-together musical flugal horn seemed relatively harmless but we'd seen too many episodes of MacGyver to trust that it wouldn't be mis-used. Just as Oppenheimer didn't intend to set out to become "the destroyer of worlds" with his little do-it-yourself project, I never intended for the flugal horn to become a weapon of mass destruction. Brad was also alarmed at the introduction of chemical warfare as bubble guns unleashed a horde of ground-to-air eye-stinging missiles. We could only save ourselves at this point. Breathing a sigh of relief as we pulled away from the the battle zone, Brad turned to me and suggested, "Maybe next year, we can just send a card."
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