My son is throwing his first “party”. I believe he intends to break from the “cake and games” and turn more towards “girls and music”. Party planning has been a very humbling process. all my contributions reveals how out of touch I am with what is “cool”.
Some examples: We checked Noah out of school without giving him notice. This prevented him from introducing himself to two students he planned to invite to his party. I suggested he invite them as a means of making friends. Evidently that’s a big pre-party foul. It would be “awkward”. He asked if I had ever been invited to a party where I knew no one and to his surprise I had–several times. He follows up with a no-win question: “were you my age when this happened”? We’ve had enough of these conversations for me to know how this particular questions plays out. If I say “no” then my arguments aren’t valid because of the age difference. If I reply “yes” then he will explain how things have changed since I was his age.
I could not get Noah to help with th invitations, so I was forced to work on them alone. I knew I ought not describe it as a “birthday party”. That would be infantile. I stuck to a simple, plain design. Any graphics or fonts might trip my sons ever-so-sensitive coolometer. He’s invited about ten kids. Two are white girls. The rest are asian boys that like video games. I thought it might be cool to play a 10-man Super Smash Brother Brawl tournament with a cash money prize during the party. Noah tried to politely tell me it wasn’t a “video game party” and I should also remove the phrase “food, music and fun” from the invitation. That left nothing but a bare skeleton of the most crucial information on the invitation. Whatever.
This afternoon he built the party play list from our massive music collection. He finds 1.5 hours of music before he apologetically informs me that nearly all the music he selected are songs I did not rate well, implying our tastes were worlds apart. The truth is I rated 68% of the songs he selected 4 or more stars. Only 3 tracks have bad ratings. It grates me because Noah tends to see what he wants, and I suspect he wants to believe his tastes are different from mine. I know, I know: Time to let the boy spread his wings, express himself and whatnot. I just wish he could look objectively at the aesthetics, rather than choose crap on a stick just because I didn’t. I was mildly relieved when he turned down his sister’s aid as well. Madison is very in touch with the young teen scene–especially neutral, peppy party music. So what made his play list? Lots of Cake, a smidge of Weezer, Don’t Go There by 24k, Julianne and Babylon Zoo. The irony, it’s crushing me.