The girl celebrated six summers, and I got entangled with a water slide, a pizza with onions and a bit of sibling jealousy • And how did piñata come into our lives? • For sure, be happy

1 Naama was 6 last week. On Thursday we celebrated her birthday at home, along with friends from kindergarten. I agreed to go to a store that specializes in birthday supplies, thinking I would only have to buy a few balloons, disposable utensils, and maybe a thing or two that sell in these places, and whose existence I can not so much imagine.

That's why I was surprised to receive on WhatsApp a list of length that made me feel for a moment like an ultra-Orthodox father on the way to stocking up before closing. Maybe actually like just a father of 7, because there were candles playing in the shape of forest fairies, unicorn signs and a host of other fascinating mythological creatures, which apparently do not spread a hoof.

One word immediately shone on me from the list: Pinita. I do not expect today's birthdays to be like the birthdays we had in the '80s - however, the world has progressed a bit, and today hosting children with Beasley Grill and tap water could lead to shaming on social media. But Pinita? What about us and this stupid thing?

For those who do not know, piñata is a cylindrical and colorful container filled with sweets, and at events like birthdays the children hit it with a stick (usually with their eyes covered), hanging from a tree or from the ceiling, until all the sweets spill out of it. It is a custom that originated in Mexico, but the children of the United States have made it an American custom, as part of the cultural appropriation they make for their Hispanic immigrants.  

We do not have Hispanics, at most a few Ladino speakers who are also dwindling, and in our lapa we are never bean women. So how did the pinata come into our lives? She seems to have appeared in too many American movies for us to resist. Yes, just like with the "prom" custom of late high school, yesterday we did not know what it was and today our children can no longer do without it. This is a consumer culture on the fast track - just show us in a few movies your most cheesy and silly custom, and we'll already take it quickly as Usain Bolt snatches the stick in a messenger race.

The piñata cost me 110 shekels, even before the filling. Naama released the candies from the container in one fell swoop - mostly rubber snakes, it turns out - and then I watched the kids quickly pick them up from the floor. I guess I've already spent money in the past on worse things.

Some of the other things cost me a lot more. For example, a water slide we rented for the whole weekend. I will not reveal the price, but it certainly puts in the right proportions the fact that my mother bought newspapers for a week when I was in sixth grade so that I would have enough papers for the "package arrived" at the party.

The slide definitely did the job. She kept the kids out of my house and employed them without me having to put in too much effort. I just sat by her bottom and checked that none of them were going to drown there by mistake. It was very hot, but it was not the children's direct fault.

At some point someone came to replace me, and I went into the house. I had some work to do and planned to pull it off by the end of the party, but even before I relaxed and had time to take one breath of air conditioner, a wet girl appeared in the middle of my living room.

"Naama's father, I have grass in Fishfisho."

"What is?"

"I have grass in Fishfish. Can you help me?"

"What is a fishfish?"

The girl pointed to the bottom of her swimsuit.

"Oh, that."

I passed it on to my partner, mainly because children tell really bad stories, and I would prefer that when her mother asked her how he was at the party, she would not mention the words "Naama's father" next to the word "fishfish".

Five minutes later one of the boys entered the living room - "I want a pizza in the shade".

"There are ten pizzas out there," I said.

"But there is no shadow."

"Okay, we've already ordered. Eat what you have."

"Cut me."

"The pizzas are cut, darling, just a triangle pull out."

"Cut me an onion."

Half a minute after that I found myself cutting onions in the kitchen and apologizing apprehensively for having only purple onions. In my life I felt like crying.

The kids were just fine - played, made merry and were even quite disciplined. They are just a little more pampered than we were at their age, just as we were a little more pampered than our parents were at our age. This is how it works in a degenerate world.

At the end of the day I felt like a pineapple full of fatigue. If only someone had hit me, I would probably have exploded, and full of rubber snakes would have come out of me and scattered in the air like confetti. Not bad, the main thing that the girl enjoyed.

Oddi was the true story of this birthday. As the preparations for the party intensified, so did his questions. "Why don't friends come to me? Why did I never have a birthday?"

Of course we explained to him that he already had a birthday, and that he would have many more birthdays in the future with lots of friends, but then we went back to producing the peanuts and pizzas, and we kind of forgot about him.

Towards the end of the party, when all the kids were raging on the water slide, he suddenly disappeared for us. After searching I found him in his bed, covered, despite the intense heat.

"You do not want to play on the slide with all the kids?"

"I'll never have a birthday."

"Sure you will, Mami, in a month you will be 4 years old." The truth is it's been two months, but there were a lot of kids out there, and I had to sort it out pretty quickly.

"I'll never have a birthday."

I did not quite understand what he has to be such a Pole with these gloomy predictions of his. After all, we promised Naama six birthday presents, and one cheerleader (the birthday boy gets presents as many as his age, and his brother gets one present - another practice I had not heard of until recently, and now any parent who does not observe it is suspected of archaism).

In the end she got four presents and he five, because like in war, when you walk in with kids to a toy store, you never know how you'll come out.

But the child is still jealous, and in the books it is written that it is difficult to argue with feelings. So I promised him I would bring him any pet he wanted. He asked for a horse. I now have until September to grow a farm around the house.

shishabat@israelhayom.co.il