Happy Birthday To TheMan!!
It has been a few weeks since the ACTUAL Birthday, but it is never too late to wish someone a Great Day and tell a Funny Story. And this is yet another one of our Adventurous Funny Stories.
There are days that I sometimes wonder........do you all have these stories and you just aren't tellin' 'em? Or do I just wander into a lot of Goofiness??
So what did TheMan want to do for his birthday this year? Rock Climbing. Easy enough. My first thought was YES!! - no responsibility for an entire 90 minutes of the party - WOOOO HOOOOO!!!! Energized by the thought of planning ZERO games - ZERO crafts and TONS of Fun supervised by someone paid............I called Upper Limits. Okay - I emailed Upper Limits. I should have called - but I emailed - BigGuy has finally gotten to me - "you can email much easier then you can look it up in the telephone book". Silly me forgetting that talking to someone in PERSON often works much better then email.
Still - even though I emailed and booked the event and then called a week later to find that I didn't actually have the party reserved because even though you email you still have to call. Make sense to you? Yeah, me either. But if I dwell on this glitch then the story will be WAY too long. We will move on.
Everything set - cake made and terribly impressive - and I do say so myself (but go look at the Wimpy Kid Cake by clicking here).
Kids arrived. Parents dropped off leaving us to supervise their lovelies.
Presents were opened - Cake was served - Pictures were taken......and then everyone went outside to bounce about in the yard......I was thinking "dang this is the easiest party yet - nothing can go wrong now!"
Famous Last Words right? Right. Dang the irony.
Within seconds of thinking that horribly comfortable thought it dawned on me that I needed to have each one of the 15 parents sign a release form for Upper Limits to allow their kiddo to climb. OHMYGOODNESS!! That had completely left my mind in the planning process. I mean at some point I had thought "When a parent drops off I will have them sign the form".......and then that thought left me forever. This is hard to admit - because I am a confessed perfectionist.
I explained the problem to BigGuy, SH, KBS and Nanny (BigGuy's mom). They all just looked at me like deer in headlights. Then I said, "We have to forge the signatures". The statement sat there - and no one looked happy with me. So I modified it, "We have to call each parent and get thier permission to forge their signatures." - that time everyone said "Good idea". We figured with 5 adults there we could each sign a few forms and the different hand writings would look random enough. BigGuy started printing out the release forms on line......yeah right.....so we can't make reservations online, but we can download and print the legal documents online. Make sense to you? Yeah, me either.
My job was to phone parents. Everyone else started filling out forms as parents said "go for it". We got all the parents, but 2. MO is a bestie and I knew she would let us sign for her kids. TL is another one of my nearest and dearest - she wouldn't mind either. We signed, filled, asked kids birthdays, signed more.......and then loaded everyone into the cars.
Now this is where disaster #2 happened. See one of the kiddo's had Aspergers. I was warned that sometimes he might wander off. His mom said he wouldn't wander far. My goal was to be his shadow and have him ride with us when we went from our house to Upper Limits. He had been great - having a fine time - getting along with everyone. The other boys were all great too - fine time - getting along (not a single fight!). We loaded them into our van, SH's monster SUV and then the little boys in KBS's van. We drove. We were about half way there when I realized that the boy I planned to shadow was NOT IN THE VAN!! Okay......no need to panic......he is in SH's monster SUV......thank goodness for cell phones right.......dialed her........."hey you have my shadow in your car right?".....she yelled back to see....."nope he ain't here".........crap.........panic now.
I had visions of him in my yard. Standing there like Home Alone. Crap.
BigGuy stopped the van - which stopped the 4 car caravan on its way to Upper Limits. I got out and ran the line - not in our van - not in Nanny's car - not in......wait KBS was smiling and rolling down her window and apologizing, "he is in here" - thank you thank you thank you was all I could think. She said he hopped in and she wasn't sure what to do - she didn't realize I wanted to be his shadow. All I could think was "who gives a crap stop apologizing!! you just saved my life!!"
I ran back to the van. Got in and life was good. SuperStar called up, "This is the worst party ever. We thought we lost a kid." To which I responded, "No this is the best party ever because we only temporarily misplaced a kid."
Everyone piled out of the vans, SUV's and various other cars....running faster then we could catch them into Upper Limits and lining up to turn in their forgery.....er I mean...signed release forms.
The first kid that I did paperwork for was tagged. I had signed the wrong dang line!! The man in charge said that the parent would need to come in and sign the correct line. Crap. I immediately went through and grabbed the papers I had signed and resigned the correct lines. I tried to encourage the man to let us phone the parent to have them give permission to us to sign the correct line. Nopers. This was our pennance. Fortunately the parent in question was one of my besties, TL. She was on her way out to pick up dinner and didn't mind running by.
Here is the kicker. She stopped in and as we are getting ready to sign the paperwork I point out to her that she can no longer sign her signature......she has to sign her signature to look like MY rendition of HER signature. So basically she had to forge my signature of the forgery of her signature. Follow that?
Now if you are following along you will notice that we have planned the Perfect Birthday Party...forgotten the paperwork that would make it seemless....received perimssion to forge signatures....forged them.......lost the one child that we were supposed to make certain was always safe.....found him.....mistakenly signed the wrong lines on the forms....corrected them and asked a parent to forge my signature forging their signature.
In the end everything worked out. So was it still the Perfect Birthday Party?
