The Games Children Play

I didn’t grow up in an age of play-dates or in a zip code where themed birthday parties were the norm. On your birthday, if you lived in my neighborhood, you got together for cake and ice cream and general mayhem with some neighbor kids and a few cousins close to your own age. It was Wisconsin. The rules were different. Although it wasn’t too unusual for a classmate to invite a few friends, it was unheard of for a classmate to invite an entire class to their birthday party. So when I got the invitation to Billy’s party it was a big deal. It broke all the rules. First, he lived more than two blocks outside my neighborhood. Second, we weren’t BFF’s; we weren’t even F’s. And third we weren’t on the same pee-wee baseball team, we knew each other were playing different sports if you know what I mean. I was more likely to get an invitation to his little sister’s party than his. I had full confidence that this invitation was a result of some cock-eyed idea Billy’s pseudo-progressive mom had heard about from Dear Abby or her sister Ann Landers. It was definitely something she hadn’t fully thought through before she started the ball rolling.

“Billy, I think you need to invite everyone in your class if you want to invite any of them.”

“Oh, Mom, do I have to?”

“You’re going to have to invite everyone or no one at all.”

This resulted in Billy having to face his own “Sophie’s Choice” either invite me and all the girls in our fourth grade class or end up having to go without a party. In the end all he really wanted was to get his buddies invited and reap the rewards of all the boy-approved presents of masculine weaponry he had been writing all year on his wish list. I think his mother was now in too deep to change her mind so Billy did his best to distribute the invitations to all twenty-two of his classmates. The boys got theirs accompanied by a punch in the arm. The girls and I had the invites slapped on our desks with a big dose of contempt.

This was to be historic; a co-ed party was almost unheard of in the time of crew cuts and GI Joes. We were all stoked for that coming Saturday afternoon, well almost all of us were. Billy’s mom may have had some last minute regrets but at this point there wasn’t much she could do to prevent the party from proceeding.

The party for me went down hill the minute I walked through Billy’s front door. I heard Billy’s mom whisper to one of the other parents dropping off their kid at the same time I got there, “Who does this one think he is?” a comment I’m sure had everything to do with my white dress shirt and bowtie. I mean who doesn’t dress for a party?

The party fare was typical sheet cake, vanilla ice cream and Cool-aid served on paper plates with plastic utensils. Billy’s birthday fell within the school year, a month after the beginning of the second term. It meant it was winter in Wisconsin so the party had to be held inside. The preferable birthday months were during the summer when all the festivities could be held outside far away from the Hummel figurines and reproduction colonial furniture. Our hostess, Billy’s mom, and her party assistant, Billy’s mother’s younger sister, had come up with some organized games to help pass the time. The games were all the typical games of chance: pin the tail on the donkey and clothespins in a bottle. They were a vain attempt at trying to divert the boys from turning any basement gadget into a gun and playing shoot to kill with all the squealing girls. It wasn’t until the very end of the party, after the gifts had been opened and Billy’s mom had decided it was time for everyone’s parents to come and pick them up that his mom and her sister decided we were going to play one last game: “Can you guess how long a minute is”.

I think they felt this might be a way to end the mayhem that had been going on for the last two hours well after their other games of chance had run out. Before they started the game they made all of us bundle up in our winter coats assuming we would be less likely to re-instigate the chaos once we were tied and zipped into our snow gear. We were all bundled up so tightly we could barely roll over on our own much less get up and run around. They sat all of us down on the basement floor. The hostess held a stopwatch while her slightly dorky sister was given the task of keeping an eye on the contestants. I think both of them were pretty much at the end of their rope and very ready for the parents to show up and get us kids out of their hair.

“All right children, we’re going to play a game called “how long is a minute”. “ We have one prize left for the winner. Now you all sit very still and when I say go you wait until you think a minute has gone by then you raise your hand. The winner will be the one closest to a minute.”

At the mention of another prize we all became a bit more focused. Unlike the politically correct parties of today where everyone is a winner, in the fifties tears were a part of every party. There were always a bunch of losers. Billy’s mom was anxious to get this game under way before the crowd of kids got distracted and managed to get up and start rolling around like pinballs bouncing off of all of her department store furniture. Whether it was fear of losing control or exhausted anger I witnessed in her eyes, the look she gave us meant business. She punched the stopwatch with a jab of her index finger and yelled, “Begin”.

There were kids who had no idea of what was going on. A few hands shot up after the first five seconds. I thought everyone knew the counting method so I began to count to myself, “One-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three…” I was surprised that the hostess didn’t get her side-kick to try to engage us in conversation to prevent any of us from using that cheating counting method but the harried sister seemed too focused on spotting raised hands oblivious to my internal counting. Many of the other kids had dropped out at around thirty seconds but I sat there counting away. The hostess and her helper began to notice most of the other kids were now out of the running. Miraculously Billy hadn't raised his hand yet, although I could see he was getting fidgety. Billy’s mom seemed to be giving him some sort of furtive glance every so often with a hint of secret signals delivered with downcast eye movements every time he looked as if he was going to bolt. As the contest boiled down to Billy, myself an two other party goers in a comatose state from having over stuffed themselves on cake and ice cream I could sense our hostess’ eye movements became a tennis match between the two of us. Maybe it was the fact her son didn’t really want to invite me in the first place, maybe she thought I had airs (I wore a white shirt and bowtie rather than a striped tee like the rest of the boys), or maybe she realized there was a chance the birthday boy wasn’t going to win this one and now she wanted him to win. I was too focused on counting to notice her icy disdain and make the realization that losing, at this point, might have been preferable to winning.

“One-thousand fifty-eight, one-thousand fifty-nine, one-thousand sixty”.

My hand shot up and I looked around. I was the only kid with his hand in the air and I had hit the minute right on the head. There was no applause. No one said congratulations or slapped me on the back. There was just this horrible scowl on the hostess’ face and Billy whining that he should have won it was his birthday. Billy’s mom leaned over and told her helper to check my wrists for a hidden watch. Oblivious to the rest of the guests they hauled me up to the front of the remaining group and checked my coat and pockets to make sure I hadn’t any hidden time keeping devices stashed away. The birthday boy’s tears turned to giggles at my humiliation and the others soon joined in. Parents began to filter in picking up their children. Billy and I remained tied into our own circles of friends through the rest of our elementary education. He played ball. I drew pictures. I never did get the prize. I never told my parents, but I went home knowing I was at least smarter than Billy’s mother.