10.098
13 (Sat) April 2019
Spaghetti Vongole al Vino Bianco
3.0
-San Antonio Plaza, Makati-
with the Family
Earlier that day, IZ celebrated his 7th birthday with a party at home. 9 first-graders, including the birthday boy.
Wanting the make the event extra special, I’d spent many hours devising and setting up a series of team carnival games – Pinger Ponger Bounceroo, Chippy Chappy Tosseroo, Uno Duo Matcheroo, Whozit Whazit Carderoo, Pira Mida Knock ‘Em Downeroo, Lego Bangoo Guesseroo – with awesome/expensive prizes – Lego sets, Funko Pops, Harry Potter stickers, Notebook of Doom books, posters, piggy banks. The games included an oh-so-clever team allocation system at the outset and a system of point accumulation to determine a Most Valuable Player at the end. I organize meetings for a living, so I was very pleased to apply this skill set for a higher purpose.
The whole thing collapsed within seconds. The teams were to be determine by each kid throwing a pair of dice; the 4 highest rollers becoming the High Rollers, and the 4 lowest rollers becoming the Low Rollers, with a Floater in between. One kid complained that he wasn’t allowed to roll first. One kid didn’t like the dice. One kid popped the dice in his mouth. One kid threw the dice at another kid. One kid disputed the math, claiming that his roll of 1 + 1 = 11. Ultimately, I just assigned them to random teams. But then of course everybody wanted to be on the other team. Parliamentarians are easy.
We eventually got thru some of the games, partially. And if I had anticipated difficulty in playing the games, I couldn’t have begun to image the insanity of distributing the prizes. In the end, they seemed to go home happy with swag bags packed with goodies.
Happy Birthday, IZ!