Party!

I was reminded by my daughter's seventennth birthday party how much I used to love a birthday party when I was a kid.

The red a-line party smock. The broad white head band. The knee-length white socks with the frill I was only allowed to wear on party days. Even getting dressed for them exciting.

Then there were the games. Pass-the-parcel,  where the prize in the centre was coveted by every child in the room. Pin the tail on the donkey, where there was real and serious danger of sticking that pin in another child's eye, and the world's greatest OH & S risk -muscial chairs.

Today, our kids parties are more planned affairs. During pass the parcel (or parcel-parcel as my daughter used to call it) the music is timed so that every kid gets to unwrap a layer and under every layer is a prize of equivalent value to the last. Pin the tail on the donkey is played with velcro. Musical chairs seems to have been banned.

I never won pass-the-parcel as a child, but it never stopped me feeling the excitment as the newpaper bundle passed through my hands. Today the kids take their expected prize (of equivalent value to their friends) and stick it, absentmindedly into their pockets.

Yes I'm getting old (and you can tell because the above was just one long sigh of 'in my day') and wow kids have some great stuff available to them now but I have to wonder if they're not missing out on something too.