Pre-K crowd plus sugar equals chaos

The birthday party was a controlled explosion.

“Explosion” because the partygoers were between 2 and 5 years old. “Controlled” because the yard had a fence.

Yeah, I was outside with them. I should have known better.

One child pretended her hands were claws and growled. The rest – boys and girls – screamed like an ’80s hair band and ran through the yard.

In this bedlam, one kid was a tiger and the others were Indian villagers running for their lives. The sound, however, was amazing. No matter how far the children ran from the Parent Safety Zone, the screams got louder. I’m sure that was against some scientific rule like the Squealing Monkey Principle or maybe the Hopeless Law of Diminishing Sanity.

The party was for a 2-year-old and, like most birthday parties – or anything that doesn’t involve socket wrenches or cheerleaders – I was confused. Children’s birthday parties are bizarre enough for parents. To a 2-year-old they probably make as much sense as rocket schematics.

Oh, Mom thinks as she’s walking through the store, little Lisa loves Elmo. Let’s give her an Elmo-themed birthday party.

So mom buys Elmo plates, Elmo napkins, Elmo balloons, an Elmo cake, Elmo party favors and Elmo margaritas for Mom and Dad after the guests have gone home and the kids crash like test pilots.

I was hiding where all dads hide at parties like this – next to the grill – but the kids found us anyway. After all the money the government spent on stealth technology for aircraft, don’t you think they’d have figured out how to make parents invisible?

Me (to a three-foot-tall rampaging mob): Sorry, but you guys can’t play here, the grill’s too hot.

Son: Then how come you get to stand so close?

Me: Go find your mother.

It’s interesting how children spend the first five years of their lives trying to find their parents and the rest of their lives hiding from them.

“Cake,” someone with a grown-up voice screamed into the yard, immediately melding tiger and villagers into one hive-like, ice-cream-and-cake-eating mass.

Wow, the sugar. We’re parents. We know what sugar does to children. But if it’s a party, we willingly give our kids enough frosting-related sugar to put Jabba the Hutt into a coma, then we have one – and only one – of them open presents.

Can you imagine what’s going on in their little heads? Swarming bees are calmer, and the presents aren’t even theirs.

“I can’t see her,” the father of the birthday girl said, trying to look through the scrum. “But I’m pretty sure she’s in there.”

We survived the party and the five-minute drive home. And, although there was no beer at the party, I realized that even if there had been, it wouldn’t have been enough.