The Better Version of Me
In many ways, Alexis is a mini me. She doesn't look like me, but HOOBOY is that my personality packed under that crown of curls. There are differences, though. Big differences. For example, she asks permission before she does ANYTHING. She won't get a snack without asking first. She won't go downstairs on a Saturday morning without asking first. She won't go to the bathroom without asking first.
"Mother May I" is her mantra.
I didn't do that. Ever. Still.
A glaring example of that major difference floated to the top of my mind lately. We're nearing Alexis' 8th birthday and starting to work on party plans, which reminded me of the whole thing. My 8th birthday party.
It's the only time I ever had a party. I did it without permission. WHOOPS.
I had saved up a few pennies and carried those pennies to the local grocery store. It was a few blocks from our house, which, HA! Alexis would never walk that far from our house without asking first. But, I walked to that store in the cold of January and bought a package of birthday party invitations. I proceeded to fill them out, distribute them to the kids at school, and then told my parents what was going on.
They kind of didn't have a choice but to go with it. Again ... WHOOPS.
But there was one little complication at the beginning of my whole scheme. There was a limited number of invitations in that package. I had to make some choices.
It turned out that I had just enough invitations to invite all of the girls in my 2nd grade class. So, BAM! PLAN! When I was done, I had one invitation left. I didn't want to let it go to waste, so I addressed it to a boy and that was the end of that.
The next day, I realized what I had done. I had forgotten one girl. I figured it out when I was distributing the invitations and she stood there empty-handed. I managed to cover for the whole thing and she walked away invited and totally happy, but I felt terrible. How could I be so inconsiderate!
To this day, I still feel bad about it, even though she did make it to the sort of party (When you don't have permission to have a party, you don't get decorations. Or cake. Or anything. LESSON LEARNED.). It's probably no coincidence that I tell Alexis she can invite her entire class every year for her birthday party. There are NO exceptions ... just invite everybody. Don't leave anyone out. Done? Done.
But, here's the thing. I don't expect that other parents have the same skeletons in their closet. I expect that other parents are more reasonable and do things like protect their sanity by creating restrictions. If a girl in Alexis' class has a birthday party and doesn't invite her, Alexis' feathers are never ruffled because I tell her there's no reason to get ruffly. "Maybe her mom only wanted her to invite a certain number of people." "Maybe her mom wanted her to invite kids whose parents she knows." "Maybe, maybe, maybe."
There's a million reasons why people choose to limit a guest list however they do so. It's not mean, it's just the way life works.
Alexis gets it. She has never been broken-hearted about being left out of anything involving kids at school.
Which, HOORAY!
I have all the happies that she gives people the benefit of the doubt and doesn't take it personally when she's not invited to something. I'm pretty sure that means she'll grow up to be an adult that doesn't throw a hissy fit when she's not invited to someone's wedding.
Which, HOORAY!
I mean, we have people that are still mad at us for not inviting us to our wedding 13 years after it happened. I'm pretty sure those are the same people whose moms complained about the "mean kids" who followed instructions and kept birthday party guest lists limited.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Reader Comments (3)
For my 5th grade birthday party, I forgot about Jeanette who was new to our school. I told her I lost the invite, blamed my mother because I felt so terrible. My mother made me fork over a few of my precious coins to buy her a special card to invite her. And she came. As I remember, her family moved again the next year. Which makes me feel worse even 40 years later because I bet that sort of thing happened to the "new girl" often.
The unruffled feathers is a great life lesson and skill for adult life.
loving that you threw yourself a birthday party. you are the best. and deserve to be celebrated.
I always had huge birthday celebrations for my kids until they reached 12. If invites were passed out at school, we either invited the everyone. When party plans (trips to baseball games, makeovers, sleep-overs) evolved to where numbers had to be limited due to affordability or space -- I mailed the invites and communicated with the other moms that it was a small affair and we couldn't invite the whole class. 30 Birthday parties later -- I think everything worked out. I even recall the mom of one autistic boy thanking me so much for including her son in the bowling party. Life comes at these kids fast today -- thanks internet -- so make kids happy when you can do it.