Rude people
I was at my nieces fourth birday party on Sunday. It was delightful. It was held in a large store designed to provide music classes for children. There were about 25 children and their parents all taking photos or running videos. There was plenty of food. The children were given a bag of inxpensive musical instruments like a tonette, rhythm sticks and a tamborine. The party lasted two hours. There was a play area and all the children got a brief music lesson.
I helped my brother and his wife serve food and clean up. Some people came up to him and made comments. I was appalled by their disrespect and outright gall. One person told him that they should not have mixed sex parties. That boys and girl should not be at the same party and that next year they should only invite girls. Another person said in the back, loudly enough to be heard by several people, that he had spent too much money on the party, that there was too much food that would be wasted, and that the party was too extravagant for a child. He had, in fact spent less money this year than he had renting a jumper filled with balls and a pool slide last year. He had bought less food and had brought carry out boxes. All the food was eaten or given away at the end of the party. There was no waste. Extra sodas were taken to his business for his employees. The party was hardly extravagant by today’s standards. My brother is in the music industry. He had no professional entertainers there. He spent a few hundred dollars to rent a space and to cater food and to give away toy bags. He spent about what I do on a fine dinner out for a party of 10-12 adults. It doesn’t break the bank.
There is a place to make comments if someone doesn’t think something is appropriate. There is a way to make such comments. Someone at the party pulled me aside to do the right thing. They had “concerns” about some people at the party. They were worried the person was mentally ill and not getting treatment. Pulling me aside to talk about the situation in private away from anyone who might overhear is an appropriate method of handling a sensitive situation. The person is mentally ill. I did tell this concerned person that her assessment was corrent and that the hosts of the party were well aware of the person’s mental illness. She’s been mentally ill for years and is opting not to have treatment. She is high functioning. Apart from inappropriate comments and paranoid delusions she can live and function. She can no longer live independently. I do not consider her harmless, however and I question how much longer she should be allowed to attend these types of functions and have children be exposed to her. For now, the children do not understand much of what she is rambling on about. In another year or so they will and then it may be a problem. She is a relative, so it’s hard to exclude her from these functions. It is her choice about whether or not to seek treatment. It is my brother’s choice to invite her or not. She has asked him not to invite me. He has refused. I haven’t asked him not to invite her.
Party behavior is relatively simple. You go there to have a good time. You mingle. You eat food. You engage with activities. You enjoy the spirit of the occasion. you are a guest. You offer to help out. You don’t criticize the host, the event, the expense, the situation, the time, the people invited, what people are wearing, the food, or the activities. You can do that later on our own time. At the event you are gracious and thankful. You model being polite, kind and pleasant to others in front of your children. You try to get along. You exhibit social decorum. You behave in ways that you want your children to mimic.
My sister-in-law was hurt by some of the comments that were made to her by some of my relatives. So I explained my childhood. I had lavish birthday parties. We had the Oscar Meyer weiner car rented for rides in the neighborhood. We were on the Sheriff John show and had him out for a party. We had marionnettes and clowns and ponies in the neighborhood rented for birthday parties. We had mixed boy and girl parties until I was 12 years old. These parties from my past were far more extravagant than what they had been throwing for their daughter in both time and expense. Their parties were fine. In one of the neighborhoods where I live parties go on for hours for preschoolers and include mariachi bands and end up with block parties and the children staying up until 2 and 3 AM. That seems a bit much. In some circles 10’s of thousand’s of dollars are spent to close down a theme park for a day for a celebrity child. That seems a bit much too, but it may be the only way the child can experience a theme park without photographers. So I think the party my brother did was just right. He had little to clean up and got a great experience for his child. The business he rented got a lot of referrals for their music classes so it worked out well for them too.
Given the fact that many people overheard the inappropriate comments that were made, maybe several people will go back to my brother and his wife and mention their concerns to him about her mental illness in private as is appropriate. Maybe he’ll be able to have the strength not to invite her or to understand that she’s quite limited and needs some further limitations and spell out some rules for her behavior at public events more clearly. It’s surpirsing to me how she can get prople who are not mentally ill themselves to repeat some of the preposterous things she says.
