When you’re a kid, no day is more exciting than, or as highly anticipated as, your birthday.
The last day of school, Christmas, Halloween…those are all nice, but your own birthday is unparalleled, because it’s unique to you.
Your siblings can’t touch you. Your parents beam at you all day. Relatives who rarely visit send you money to ease their own guilt. Your teachers are essentially contractually obligated to take it easy on you. Your friends kiss up to you for days in advance, because they know an invite (and therefore a slice of cake) depends on it.
Which brings us to the best part: the party.
Kid birthday parties fall into an array of sub-types. There’s the book-a-whole-restaurant type; the indoor-playground-mayhem type; the basement bonanza, and many others too numerous to mention.
But regardless of the venue or theme, I always found that you could learn a lot about a family by the games they prepared for the guests. Here’s a rough guide:
| Party game | What it tells you about the family |
| Pin the tail on the donkey | They are competitive, and sticklers for detail. Likely not too passionate about animal rights, or charities supporting the blind. |
| Hide and seek | Disorganized. Party planning was likely last-minute, with a budget approaching zero. Family is strangely comfortable with others knowing their secrets and/or hiding in their closets. |
| Pinata | Genetic anger management problems. The birthday boy’s name is probably Rodney, and you touch his toys at your peril. |
| Crafts | This family is run by one of those moms with a high ponytail and an upwards inflection at the end of every sentence. The kids’ cubbies are colour-coded and completely spotless. |
| Musical chairs | Dad secretly wishes he’d been a DJ. Well-meaning mom secretly thinks she can get the birthday child some cheap physical contact with their crush by somehow rigging the game. |
| Spin the bottle | Parents have no interest in supervising the party, and just want time for themselves. One of the parents is likely a step-parent. |
| Co-operative games | Leave the party immediately. Cake will be a vegetable platter. There will be no loot bags. |
In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my own birthday parties when I was a kid usually included a game where my dad would lie on the floor and we would wrap him up in toilet paper. It seemed normal and fun to me, but my friends and their parents must have thought we were crazy.
I guess what I’m getting at is that along with being very special, kids’ birthday parties are weird. They become like an open-ended religious holiday, celebrated by your family alone, so the accompanying traditions and ceremonies are understandably as unique (and again, weird) as the families that put them together.
So, in case I missed yours, happy birthday. Plan something weird. And listen to this song.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. It’s long and repetitive, but in the best kind of way. It’s almost meditative, like the repetitive action of blowing up and tying off a hundred balloons.
2. Because almost three minutes have passed before the vocals come in, it’s a bit of a shock when they finally arrive. It’s a tiny, quiet, whispered surprise party for your ears.
3. Although the rhythm is different, the melody from “happy birthday” actually fits really nicely with the chord progression. Seriously. Go back to the part of the song without vocals and hum along. Don’t know if Happyness did this on purpose, but it’s genius.
Recommended listening activity:
Licking icing off your fingers.