I’m A Loser, Baby
As a child in 1980s America I attended my fair share of birthday parties. Some featured a magician, a clown or a magician-clown (2021 clown-hating Lauren shudders at the thought!) hired to entertain a captive and very gullible audience. Some were held at fun-inciting venues like roller rinks, the zoo, or popular fast food outlets. I have very vague memories of attending a party at a Bonanza steak house. I really wish I could remember what that party entailed; exactly what about a steak house screams, ‘Let’s throw our young child’s birthday celebration here’? The 80s was an interesting time.
As a parent, I fully appreciate the appeal of the off-site birthday party. I had a bowling birthday party in maybe 3rd grade, but most of the Prince girls’ birthday parties were home-based affairs. They included planned activities with varying levels of complexity and/or adult involvement. No 80s party was complete without a piñata. A blindfolded, slightly dizzy child, wielding a stick, aiming to hit a papier-mâché sculpture loaded with candy, suspended from a height—what could possibly go wrong?? Invariably, the candy used to fill the piñata isn’t top quality, since you need so much to ‘make it rain’, as it were. No matter. Once that sucker busted open it was every child for themselves, on for young and old. Kids scrambled to grab hard candies —the kind usually not considered worthy enough to hand out at Halloween— as if their very lives depended on it. Pin the Tail on the Donkey was similarly popular, but with no confectionary reward. As a 5 year old, I had a brilliant party hosted at my parents’ pastry shop/coffeehouse. Shout out to Apple Tree Preschool ‘Crickets’ kinder class, 1984, all in attendance. Best.party.ever! I was a Garfield fan at the time. We played Pin the Tail on Garfield.
One game I never played, at any party, was Pass the Parcel. For the uninitiated, Pass the Parcel, an English/Australian party classic, is a twist on Hot Potato. Children sit in a circle. A present is passed from person to person while music plays. When the music stops, the child holding the parcel unwraps it. But here’s the rub— the parcel isn’t wrapped in one layer like a normal present. Pass the parcel parcels consist of many, many layers. This is where things get interesting and…controversial.
Apparently OG Pass the Parcel is played in such a way that only the winner gets a gift. That is, only the child who unwraps the final layer of the many-layered marvel is rewarded with the ultimate prize. The ‘modern’ update to this beloved party game is that a trinket is wrapped into each layer, so every child receives a gift. This means, however, that whomever is controlling the music has to actively watch the movement of the parcel and strategically pause the music, so as to ensure the parcel lands in the lap of a different child each time. This not only complicates things for the adult serving as DJ, but contradicts the very point of a game that involves winners and losers—there are no losers.
The delightful and genius Aussie family cartoon Bluey was at the centre of a maelstorm of parent opinion when on a recent episode, one of the dog dads in the show railed against the modern version of Pass the Parcel and, at his own child’s birthday party, insisted they play the old-school way. The party guests and their parents bristled at the idea of not everyone getting a prize. There were tears aplenty from the partygoers who missed out. The brilliant part, however, was that eventually everyone came round to accepting the OG method as an alternative to the norm and actually preferred it. When not everyone wins, victory is that much sweeter. More importantly, the party guests came to understand the joy of taking part in a game and being happy for a friend’s good fortune. When young Bingo perpetually missed out on nabbing the prize but eventually learned to shrug it off, her mum Chili said pointedly, “ You know what, Bingo? I think you’re getting quite good at losing.” That’s the golden bit. Losing gracefully, learning to accept disappointment and taking pleasure in good things happening to other people are not innate responses in young children. These are skills that must be taught. As sure as there is sun, there will also be rain. Best give your child an umbrella, hey?
Nothing like an electric blue unitard to really make you want to work out. I got two of these at the Garfield party.
The Takeaway:
The joy is in the playing, not the winning.
Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.
Knowing how to sit with and move past disappointment
is a valuable life skill for everyone.
Want to know MOrE?
I’ve added a YouTube link for the infamous Pass the Parcel episode below, though the link may not work outside of Oz. Australians can watch every single Bluey episode on ABC Iview. If you’re in the States and have access to Disney+ or Disney Junior, check out Bluey there. It is my favourite contemporary children’s cartoon. The Blue Heeler family of Bluey (6 years old), her little sister Bingo (4), Chili (mum) and Bandit (dad), are a perfectly imperfect modern family, who just happen to be dogs and live amongst other dogs. The issues faced by Bluey and Bingo are absolutely appropriate for their age groups, as is the ‘drama’ that often follows. Bandit and Chili are a super-relatable blend of laid-back and frazzled, in the way that anyone parenting young children (or even not-so-young children) can appreciate. The episodes are only 8 minutes long and the dialogue is cleverly laced with subtle humour perceptible by the adults watching but also laugh out loud funny for children. My kindies at work are huge fans, but Annabelle and I watch Bluey regularly too, for real life!
