Birthday Season Begins

THE SEASON is upon us and our six-week succession of birthdays, major holidays, and anniversaries has pushed us into the annual frenzy of parties and celebrations. So this week, the story around here is birthdays and what to do for them.

The birthday scene in Muscat is pretty grueling. As the magical day draws nearer, expat and Omani parents alike struggle with the annual festivity. Should it be an indoor arcade and junk food combination? Muscat suffers from a small handful of these indoor arcades which are generally festooned with grossly enlarged, happy photographs of content children riding rides and playing innocuous video games but are frequented by children who scream, pull their nannies from ride to ride, and shoot passers-by with the video game guns. They are always nestled in a cocoon of fast food restaurants: McDonald’s, Hardee’s, KFC…they are all faves.

Tehva, predictably enough, thinks these indoor arcades would make the ideal birthday party location but I disagree and, since I hold the purse strings, we have yet to suffer through such a party.

Of course there is always the pizza party option, the movie theater option, and the hire-the-magician-who-always-says-“YES BO!” option. There is the pool party option, the party in a park option, the rent-a-restaurant option, the DJ dance hall option, and the party tents in the front of the house option.

We are swimming in options here in Muscat and yet I live in mortal terror of most of them because they all seem to be colossal energy suckers; frankly, my energy banks are almost depleted just with day-to-day life here. And here is a brutal (and, possibly, revolting if you are an über parent) confession--I have, through overt manipulation, managed to avoid throwing birthday parties for my own children each year by forcing them to choose between having a birthday party in Muscat or doing something fun and moderately expensive in Dubai each January. They always choose Dubai. **SCORE**

This year, though, Tian decided she was going to have a birthday party. As she laid it out, it promised to be a low-energy affair so I agreed but with hesitation. After all, her judgment remains teenage-ish and her fantasy birthdays seem too out of the box for a crowd more accustomed to malls and pizza parlors than nature. Her party last year (an epic trek up a wadi about an hour and a half away) was rained out against all odds TWICE, much to most of her friends’ relief. Based on that experience, I decided to, well, I don’t want to say manipulate, but as the mother of a now- teenager I am seeing that I have to subtly encourage the shaping of certain situations in order to make them feasible. You can read feasible there as acceptable to and convenient for me if you like.

So here is how Tian managed to have the best birthday party ever, in spite of her history of party fails.

      1.) Party guests--I kind of accidentally booked three Couchsurfers in to our place for the weekend which meant that we had a French author-illustrator of children’s books staying on the third floor, an Argentinian biker sleeping on the futon in the school room, and a South Korean university student sleeping on the spare mattress. Bringing those three to the party with us provided immense entertainment. Once we got to the beach, the author-illustrator set to work carving the cartilaginous inside of a squid into a Maori-like mask and presented it to Tian as a gift. The biker juggled tennis balls much to Tehva’s delight. And the student dragged the kids around the tide pools fishing out creatures great and small for observation and possible consumption. 

Their presence also added a quirky, bizarre twist to the general ambiance, firmly maintaining our status as “that weird family that carts perfect strangers around on weekends”.

      2.) Party food redefined--We convinced Tian that shwarma wraps, pigs in a blanket, and finger food requiring advance preparation are not acceptable party foods (due to the fact that I would have to trek out and buy them/make them the night before, during which time I wanted to be out enjoying a Christmas party on someone’s roof instead of chasing down birthday snacks). Tian now believes that French stick and lunch meat straight from the package make better eats and, more importantly, so do her friends.

     3.) Sun-proof party tent--In order to avoid carting along more than the basics, we took along a huge tube of sunscreen instead of that sun blocking party tent we had considered. Okay, honestly the only party tent we considered was in passing: “Do you think anyone will get sunburned at the beach? I guess some people hire tents to address this possibility. Do we have another tube of sunscreen?”

     4.) Birthday bonding--We provided snorkeling equipment to teens, some of whom had never really been in the ocean before, timed the party so that it was almost low tide, and forgot to warn them about the sea urchins. No worries. Only one ended up with spikes in her hand, feet, and stomach, which provided a sort of bonding moment among the kids in attendance.

     5.)  Instant party favors--We also inadvertently timed our visit with that of a spear fisherman who impressively skewered four enormous squids and then decided to clean them on the beach. He tore out the “backbones”, ink sacs, and guts, and left everything on the rocks while explaining his vivisection. That was worth every cent we spent on his time which was, oh yeah, nothing.

     6.) Face painting--The kids squeezed the squids’ discarded ink sacs, smeared their faces with the black oily stuff and then ran around the beach screaming, “War paint, war paint!”

      7.) Birthday cake--We forgot to bake a cake so we gave the kids Dixie cups full of fruit salad instead. We also forgot the spoons so they drank the fruit and claimed it a great adventure. Tony reckons that only a group of homeschooled teens would happily finish off a gallon of fruit salad and not complain about the absence of a cake.

The two hours of beach time passed in a flash and before we knew it, it was time to pack everyone up and head home. It was the best birthday party ever and I would guess that if anyone wanted to make one of those credit card commercials about it, it would go something like

A collection of dead squids and their innards--$0

Three entertaining gentlemen from various parts of the world--$0

Beach front party location--$0

Who needs Visa?