Something about being about 1/3 of the way through September makes people want to have birthday parties. And crash airplanes into buildings. I was mostly affected by the former this particular weekend.

I went to two birthday parties for six year-olds yesterday and my brother-in-law's party today. So, let's see, 9 months before September 11th was December 11th. Why were so many people conceiving children on December 11th? Uh, it's four days after Pearl Harbor day. I guess that's kinda sexy. Sometimes Hanukkah falls in early December. Hornykkah apparently. I really have no idea.

So, yesterday, the kidlet drags me to two separate birthday parties, both of which made me feel horribly out of place. The first one was a Harry Potter themed party. The parents developed various Harry Potter themed activities, built a dragon in the backyard, turned their garage into a spooky tunnel, and assumed Happy Potter personas as they led the children through various witch and wizard activities. It looked like a ridiculous amount of creativity and effort.

I reflected upon my daughter's last birthday party which we held in a park, allowing the kids just to run around and play. Amount of creativity required: 0. Certainly my wife put in many hours of cooking and prep, but we didn't actually have to successfully perform magic. I sat at this party and watched one of the parents pull off a competetent Professor McGonagall impression while leading the kids through a Hogwarts-themed ballroom dance competition and thought, "Man! My kid oughta have parents like that!"

Better luck next time, Daisy.

The next party was held at a gymnastics studio. The kids were led through various gymnastic exercises, while the parents sat around and gabbed about their vaginas. Ok, not all of them talked about their vaginas because there were some men there, but I'm not really very good at the male bonding thing. I've always sucked at it. Now that I know something about baseball, I figured that I could at least fake a sports-themed conversation. So, when I saw that one of the guys had a SF Giants screen-saver on his phone, I brought up the most recent Giants' game.

That ploy worked for about 10 seconds before he got a good whiff o' nerd and quickly excused himself. The guys there were all just much cooler than me. They were discussing bands I had never heard of so I had a hard time inserting myself into the conversation. My only option was to try and out-cool them by making up band names.

"Dawgs, you heard the new single by the Hornikkahs? It puts the fo in the shizzle!"

Instead, I put my penis between my legs and retreated back to the women, where the conversation was about...giving birth!

One chick's baby was big, and another chick had a baby with broad shoulders, so they were all "woe is my vagina". I had little to offer although I seriously considering making up a story about the time I crapped out a bicycle tire. Uncharacteristically, I refrained.

Today's birthday party was just family, so I fit in pretty well. Just to be safe, I kept my vagina stories to myself.