I’ve been to 100 parties this year. It seems like 100, anyway. I was invited to none of them. They were for my 100 children. It seems like 100, anyway. Actually, I think I have three. For all our children’s parties, my husband and I serve as unpaid chauffeurs and chaperones.

Related Articles: All You Need to Know About Birthday Parties | Do’s and Do Not’s For Your Child’s Birthday Party | Party Behavior: How to Help Your Child Become a Little Lady or Gentleman | More Party Ideas | More Parenting Humor From Our Family Funbook: Candy Bar Cookie Pops | Ice Cream Cake | Make Safe Watercolors | Super Sparkle Paint | More Funbook Ideas

Here’s the lowdown from a veteran on how to par-tay til you drop. And even after you drop, in most cases. It is the tradition to spend Fridays buying presents at Target or Wal-Mart and Saturday mornings wrapping them. You will carefully fold the overpriced gift wrap from the last school fundraiser, line up the wrapping so there aren’t overlaps, and make a noble yet pathetic attempt to curl the ribbon before surrendering. The guilt over the limp ribbon makes you search long and hard for the perfect birthday card for each child, in your pile of overpriced school fundraiser cards. Meanwhile, approximately every two minutes your husband will shout, "Kids don’t care about the wrapping! They just want the toys!" If men had their way, they’d shove the things in grocery bags or hand the kids cash. Or so they sneakily tell you so that you insist on doing the wrapping every Saturday morning.

The birthday kid will invariably open the carefully wrapped gifts in world-record time. As for the cards, her parents will have to wave them in her face and threaten no TV for a month before she’ll give them a glance.

Gymnastics parties are the cause of numerous injuries. To the parents. While your happy children do fancy flips and giant bounces, some or most of you will twist your ankles, suffer from nausea, and otherwise harm yourselves attempting feats that should be banned for your own safety. There is also great risk of mental harm. Tears will be spilled as you realize you will never be able to perform a forward roll again without first scheduling an appointment with a chiropractor.

At backyard parties with professional entertainers, the children will be amused for about four minutes and then spend the next two hours tossing around an old dog toy the parents forgot to throw away. Inevitably, as is the law for such parties, a cup full of bright red punch will spill on something precious and invaluable.

There will be at least two close calls at piñata time: One, a toddler will dart out just as the largest kid-the thug of the neighborhood who crashed the party uninvited-- swings the bat like a deranged killer. Two, a dad will almost throw out his back while showing his child how to hold the bat.

The children will fruitlessly hit at the piñata for hours until one of the dads finally decides to split it apart with his bare hands. He has a fifty percent chance of breaking a finger. At least one child will cry that he didn’t get enough candy, the right kind of candy, or that even though he got fifty of his favorite candies, his brother got fifty-one.

As for the Dreaded Chuck E. Cheese-you will have no memory of it due to post-traumatic stress disorder. Though occasionally you will wake up screaming, "Giant rodents!"

Slumber parties: If you make your daughter wear pants because it’s cold at night, the other girls will be wearing shorts or miniskirts and your daughter will shoot you looks that could be put to good use in the war. When you pick her up the next morning, the red-eyed parents will tell you 100 girls were there. Your daughter will be cranky as an angry witch the entire day. And for the next eight years, every time she hears the word "pants" she will sob over the humiliation you caused her.

At bowling parties, the children will spend most of their time picking the perfect ball and waiting for the workers to decide whose turn it is to retrieve the balls stuck on the lanes. That is because there is always at least one partygoer nicknamed World’s Slowest Bowler. The kid whose ball bounces the most times from one bumper guard to the other will invariably get the highest score. On the next lane over will be a group of ex-cons, teens, or ex-con teens. They will use the F-word whenever they get a gutter ball, a spare, a strike, or open their mouths.

My husband and I are planning our own party. One of these days, if we can ever find the time. It involves putting our kids to bed, sitting on the couch, and collapsing.

About the Author
Debra Garfinkle is the author of Storky: How I Lost My Nickname and Won the Girl (Putnam, April 2005), a humorous novel for teens. She lives with her husband and three young children in Southern California. You can visit her website dlgarfinkle.com here.

Related Articles: All You Need to Know About Birthday Parties | Do’s and Do Not’s For Your Child’s Birthday Party | Party Behavior: How to Help Your Child Become a Little Lady or Gentleman | More Party Ideas | More Parenting Humor

From Our Family Funbook: Candy Bar Cookie Pops | Ice Cream Cake | Make Safe Watercolors | Super Sparkle Paint | More Funbook Ideas

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