As the screams and giggles and crying and hysteria and temper tantrums die down from a child’s birthday party next door, I recall playdates from my childhood.  What I recall is that there weren’t any playdates during my childhood.  In hindsight, probably for the best.

I was an extremely shy kid.  Give me a room with a door I could lock and a stack of books I could read and I’d jump for joy.  That’s the happiest memory I have.  Calm and cooperative, only spoke when spoken to, cordial to everyone and appreciated the kindness of strangers. So in today’s world I’d be kidnapped, raped and fed to a dozen pit bulls.  I guess it’s just another version of entertaining myself.  Not one I suggest.  

My parents tried to be good parents but were so god awful at it that they had to sit my brother and I down one day to say:

Listen, we know we suck at this and know that you know we suck at this.  

So anything you could come up with to get yourself prepped for life would be appreciated.  

My brother had an after school neighborhood football team, then an after school football cheerleader, then an after school hazy phase.

As for me, I got stuck with a paper route and piano lessons. (previously discussed) So meet my playdates; a dog gnawing at my calf and a keyboard ready to be assaulted.  I don’t think I blew out a birthday candle until I turned 40 as my parents insisted my birthday was really their celebration of the passage of life.  Since I had no basis for thinking otherwise, I went with it.  They’d get dressed up and go to dinner and let me stay up a half hour past my regular bedtime.  Not that I had anything to do to fill an extra thirty minutes. The turnaround was that Mother’s and Father’s Day was KIDS DAY.  We were placed center stage as they celebrated us as being the reason they were a Mommy and Daddy. Now they still got dressed up and went to dinner while we stayed home scratching our heads.

So many people have happy childhood memories.  Mine are memorable albeit mainly for the catastrophic events strung together.  Like being the page turner for the church organist and falling asleep on top of roughly fifteen upper register keys.  Hey it was 8:30 AM.  Like being the acolyte for church (that’s the one that lights the candles on the altar) and being instructed by my mother to go downstairs to the laundry room and practice lighting a match.  After a slew of failed attempts, I got one to light and promptly set a bedsheet on fire.  Had I ever seen a birthday candle I may have figured it out.  Geez, that must have been when I was nine because when I was ten I begged for two hamsters and my godmother (likely the most stable influence on me) got two hamsters and put them in a shoe box.  Well one chewed itself out of the lid and got away inside her car with her infant son in a car seat.  The other one bit my finger and I had to shake it off and never saw it again.  

These things add up.  Abandonment by hamsters.  I was allowed to get a pet turtle, one of those little ones.  I named it Harvey and took it over to the neighbors one day.  Well one of the kids bicycled right over Harvey.  His eyes almost popped out each side.  My first experience with roadkill.  Then I wanted Guinea Pigs.  I left the door open one day and our dog killed both of them.  Blood, guts and guilt.  So it was probably for the best that I didn’t have playdates with playmates as god knows what would have happened to them.  

Paperback Peyton Place [Italian] BookI stuck with the books.  I even read my mother’s hidden paperback version of Payton Place.  

Woooooooooo.  That was eye opening!  

Everybody had a playdate in that town.