I agreed to look after a birthday party for five five-year-olds because, at that moment, I was convinced that five small humans would be less work than one unpleasant work meeting. That was my first mistake. My second mistake was taking a strategy with me, and that strategy was bubbles.
The plan was simple and beautiful, like all plans that fall apart in ten minutes. I hand out bubble wands, the kids will blow bubbles, they'll be calm and enchanted, I'll have a coffee and look like the responsible adult who's got it all under control with one hand tied behind my back. The reality was that the first child drank the contents of the bubble wand in one go before I could even finish saying the word "carefully," and from that moment on, it wasn't a party, but a field exercise with casualties.
Then came the bundt cake. The bundt cake was from Grandma, which means it was sacred and that any damage to it would still be a topic of discussion at the family level by Christmas. It sat in the middle of the table like a monument, proud, perfect, and I guarded it more than the children. Of course, the moment I turned around, one of them stuck their finger into it up to their elbow to see "if there was a candy inside." There isn't. There's never anything in there. But the calmness with which that child explained it to me, while having their hand buried in Grandma's life's work, taught me more about life than all of high school.
And the candies. The candies were a mistake I made myself and knowingly, because I naively thought sugar would calm the kids down. Sugar doesn't calm kids down. Sugar turned each one of them into a small uncontrolled missile, and suddenly I was chasing five revved-up five-year-olds around the garden who had the energy of a power plant and the judgment of no one. And that's where the punchline of the whole afternoon came in. During that chase, each one of them lost one shoe somewhere. Not both. One. Five kids, five lost shoes, not a single pair, like it was some ritual I hadn't been initiated into.
When their parents came to pick them up, I stood in the middle of the garden, an empty bubble wand in one hand, a skewered bundt cake in the other, surrounded by a sugar apocalypse and five children in socks. Someone asked me how it went. I said great. It was the biggest lie of my life, and I would have blown a bubble at it if I had any left.
This event takes place on 12 dates
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