Birthday Blues

This is a season of weddings and birthdays and babies being born all over the place – really, one was born in a library! Thankfully though I don’t know that one. This is about all the people we do know and like well enough to supply with gifts.
S has predicted that we will be the first family to go bankrupt because of birthdays and birthday presents.
The average child’s birthday party consists of invitation cards (in theme), decorations (in theme), return gifts (in theme), an EVENT MANAGER (no more paper cut-outs of Pin-The-Tail-on-The Donkey), a tattoo artist, a magician. These are mandatories – more mandatory than the birthday kid himself.
So your little invitee walks in and says “Happy Birthday, Adi, where’s the tattoo artist? Can he tattoo Ben10 fighting Spiderman on my arm? He can’t? ok Give me my gift back – and my return gift.”
The next one walks in, looks at the magician and says “This guy was at Ria’s party. He can only pull out rabbits, not elephants from his hat. Give me back my gift.” And so on…..

Learning : So we should all ban birthday parties, and go back to Pin-the-tail-on-the Donkey. Or, when your lil 4 year-old comes to you with jam on his face and cake on his mind, do what we do. Sell your car, and go (by bus) to buy yet another birthday gift.

Magnetic Man

And then a long lost school friend who I’ve just Facebooked, asks me to describe the man I married. Wasn’t the best of times, since I’d had a long silent sulk this morning, which he didn’t even notice. Anyways, after chewing on my mouse (pencil/ pen/ nails – it’s just a figure of speech ok?) I got that one word to describe him !
“Magnetic”. A magnetic personality.
I mean, everything electronic just flies at him.
As soon as he enters the door, after a whole day at office, for example, the remote control flies into his hand. His feet are then drawn to the television, and his body responds immediately to gravity and attains a horizontal position, from which it is only coaxed out when the beer can flies once again into his hand.
At times like this, I resist the temptation to throw the frying pan at him. After all, it’s metal, isn’t it? It should go and meet the middle of his eyebrows on its own. Hardly my fault ! He’s magnetic !

The flag

We bought 3 little flags the night before Republic Day.
1 Re each. The price that patriotism is selling at.

We woke early in the morning, and went to Cubbon Park.
The boys played football, I fell into a dirty stream, the dog tried his best to pick fights with every stray dog, and Neel had to be pulled off the fence of the goose enclosure.
I took my baby for the building Flag Hoisting – and eyed the free coffee, that never came my way. While the children were belting out a re-mix of Vande Mataram, we were talking about allergies.
Later that day, we went shopping (great Sales in town), ate, did a lot of book browsing, and I got food poisoning, and ended the day throwing up the entire contents of my mile-long intestines (And a good part of the intestines too).
All in all, a nice full day, I’d say.
Before getting into bed, I picked up my shopping bags, and found something lying squashed under them.
The flags.

Broken Bones

My little boys are definitely competitive.
Neel fractured his arm when he was 4. Nik has sprained his foot before he turned 2.
I have so many XRays of them both, that I could set up a whole Spooky House Gallery.
Oh that’s ok, says Savio, their cousin. I’ve got 8 stitches on my face. Great ! A new high for them to aim for.
The worst part ? They don’t learn.
Each fall from the table, my BP does a pole vault. But little Nik bawls his head off, wipes his snotty nose, and goes right upto the table, and jumps again. And falls again. And bawls again. On and on, till their Dad comes home to see me crying.
Are you hurt? He asks
No, but Nik is.
Is that why he’s crying?
No, that’s because I spanked him.
S sits down on that one… Let me get this straight. He hurt himself, so you hurt him some more, so he’d cry, so you’d cry.
Something like that… fast learner, this man !

Learning from today :
Kids need to jump. They need to fall. They need to learn. I need to learn that they won’t learn. I also need to know that the only permanent scars will be those worry lines on my face !