How to convince me to attend your child’s birthday party
If you have kids, at some point, you have to plan their birthday parties. For their first three years of life, these are easy enough to manage. You invite your parents over, get a cake, the child headbutts it, they cry, you drink, class dismissed. Right around age four, things begin to get complicated. You have to start inviting over their little friends, and because the little friends can’t drive, their parents must show up with them. The flip side of this coin is that my children invariably get invited to these parties, which requires I also attend. 100% of the time, I don’t want to attend a child’s birthday party. The kids become rabid, everything is sticky, and I don’t want to talk about the new Tepui tent some dad named Arthur installed atop his vintage Toyota 4Runner. However, like almost everything in life, there are exceptions I’m willing to make, and in a shocking turn of events, I’ve listed those exceptions below for you to read!
Your child’s birthday party is being held at a bar
This carries a couple of positive implications. The obvious being that I am at a bar and can order alcohol. The second, and perhaps less obvious, is that children aren’t allowed in bars, which means this isn’t actually a child’s birthday party I’m just drinking in a bar at 12:30 pm on a Saturday morning. Everybody wins.
You are a direct family member
This is reserved exclusively for siblings. If we have the same mom and your kid is turning an age, I’m legally required to attend the party. I’m also legally allowed to make a scene and openly critique the athleticism (or lack thereof) of all of the other children (and adults) present.
There’s an In-N-Out Truck
If you can guarantee I am the first person served at the In-N-Out truck when it shows up and is ready to go, I will attend your child’s birthday party for as long as it takes me to finish my Double Double (animal-style) with fries (not animal-style) and a Neopolitan shake.
Dua Lipa is performing
I’m not sure what type of string you’re going to have to pull to make this happen, but if you got Dua Lipa to perform at your kid’s birthday party, not only will I be attending, I’ll be there to help set up, listen to sound check, tear down, and sort recyclables from compostables.
You also hate children’s birthday parties
If, like me, you also hate children’s parties then I will come and we can commiserate together. Some ground rules: We will sequester ourselves to a corner of the party and it will be blatantly obvious we’re trying to avoid everyone. Any task, no matter how minor, will be carried out by us. For example, some child only puts purple ice in their cup of Honest Pink Lemonade? Great, hop in my 1989 Porsche 944 Turbo (it’s a Turbo), and we’ll drive to the nearest purple ice factory in Ventura County to get it done. Oh, the party’s over now and all we have is this giant bag of purple ice cubes? Shoot. I guess we should make some G & T’s with purple ice cubes?
Your kid is shockingly mature for their age and has asked to go to a Dodger game
If your little dude or dudette is one of those blessed children that makes eye contact during conversations with adults and provides cogent responses to questions and has asked to attend a Dodger game in lieu of a more traditional party, I’m so fucking there, man. Extra points if he/she keeps score during the game and is down to go on snacks and hot dog runs for us.
You don’t have a kid and just wanna hang
This is usually the less likely scenario but if you don’t actually have a kid or they aren’t having a birthday party and you just wanna hang and do dope stuff, I’m down. Count me in. I’ll grab some In-N-Out and purple ice cubes and we can throw baseballs at empty beer bottles in the backyard.