The Cheese Stands Alone

I did a bad thing this morning. We never got the mail yesterday (it was 15°F yesterday, I was deep in the throes of designing the program for my concert this coming Saturday, and I was getting ready to take Thing 2 to the doctor--yes, I know, excuses, excuses). So, I stopped and picked it up on the way back from the bus stop this morning. In there was a letter addressed to my five year old from one of his classmates.

Now, my five year old's mail falls into only a few categories:

1. cards from grandparents
2. National Geographic Little Kids magazine
3. thank you notes from birthday parties already attended
4. birthday party invitations

Based on forensic evidence, I determined that this must be a Category 4 missive. With the holidays coming up, and knowing that he was very put out the last time we had to decline an invitation, I opened the letter to get an advance peek at what was inside. Analysis proved to be sound, and I, with much dread, opened an invitation to a Chuck E. Cheese party, the second one from one of his classmates this school year.

Now, as you must know by now, I have two older children. During the past twelve years, eight of which have led me through prime whole-class birthday party territory, we have only ever once been invited to Chuck E. Cheese. When the kindergartener was invited to a party there last month, I figured that, based on the law of averages (and the fact that CEC is about 40 minutes away from our town), this would be the only CEC party he ever got invited to, so we accepted and went. He was gleeful and had a wonderful time, and I gambled (in CEC's glorified slot machines) with his coins and got him prize tickets. That said, it was packed, the parents are stuck there but are not fed anything or even given drinks for two hours (not that I couldn't take care of that myself, and, hey, at least they serve Coca Cola products!), and the birthday girl sat at the table the whole time, looking shocked and not even playing with the other kids. Really, the place was nutso.

So, while all clues pointed to the fact that I'd be opening a birthday party invitation, I was not expecting yet another one to CEC. Eek! Really, I don't consider myself to be a mean mom. I take my kids to these parent-accompanied parties as much as our schedule allows. But WHY can't we have something else scheduled during this one? The idea of driving to CEC, forty minutes away, through holiday shopping territory, and making my way through the mall parking lot in which it is located, on the Saturday before Christmas, and THEN having to actually spend two hours in CEC, just does not float my boat. It makes me wonder if these people scheduled it at that time in the hopes that no one would come (yes, I'm in an evil mood today).

Luckily, I have reasonable children. So, I'll tell him about the party (I don't like to hide this stuff from the kids--it'll just come back and bite me in the butt later), but we planned to go to Mystic Aquarium (at HIS request) that weekend, and, guess what? That trip is now scheduled for the Saturday before Christmas, at the same time as the birthday party. Darn the luck!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Ephemera

The other day my five year old dragged me to McDonald's. I haven't been there for lunch in years (we went for breakfast a few times last year, when he was still in preschool) because, really, the food just doesn't taste good to me any more. Perhaps you need to be a starving, dining-hall-bound college student to appreciate it. But, anyway, I ordered a Big Mac. And it was actually good.

Now, the Big Mac, unlike many of it's calorie-ridden compatriots, has been around for a very long time. I still remember seeing commercials for it when I was in elementary school, back in the Dawn of Time (that would be the 70's). One in particular showed people saying the ingredients backwards. Unlike my offspring, who can recite the entire script to any movie they've seen more than once, I have a hard time memorizing things. Always have and probably always will. My brain just doesn't want to do it. However, I was totally entranced by Backwards Big Mac, and I worked VERY HARD to learn to do it. Despite forgetting many a memorized classic poem and Shakespearean speech, I can still do it today. Bun seed sesame a on onions pickles cheese lettuce sauce special patties beef all two. It's probably more impressive in person, a few hours into a cocktail party, but there you go.

Another thing I memorized in my youth was this:

Drink Coca-Cola cigarettes,
Smoke Wrigley's spearmint beer.
Kennel Ration dog food makes your complexion clear.
Simonize your baby with a Hershey's candy bar.
And Texaco's the beauty cream that's used by all the stars.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire.
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear.
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three.
And people over 65 should bathe in Lipton tea....with flow-through tea-bags.

I think it's funny what we remember. I cannot remember the phone number I had for seven years in Virginia or even what I had for dinner last Tuesday. I'm not one of those people who can tell you their seventh grade locker combination. I don't even remember the addresses I lived at over the years. I'd say that I'm like Sherlock Holmes, purging all extraneous information from my brain, but I'd also make a poor witness to a crime--I can't even tell you what vehicles my neighbors drive, and I stand next to their cars every morning at the bus stop. But, I can still play the first song I ever memorized in piano lessons, and I can still remember Backwards Big Mac and Mixed-Up Billboard. Sometimes, for whatever reason, these things will pop into my head from nowhere. I'll be driving along, mulling over adult problems and kid logistics and what's for dinner tonight and suddenly my head will be singing "Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts/Mutilated monkey meat/Itty bitty birdie feet." And it makes me smile.

And that's my silver lining for today.