my life will never be the same
again! one of the pediatrics residents in the hospital invited tim and i to her
son aaron’s first birthday party! it was held on the top/10th floor of the
nicest hotel in tacloban. there were even signs outside indicating “this way to
the best party ever!”. inside the elevator was what seemed like a plastic
robot, which was impressive. but then we realized he was a person painted like
a robot, being paid to act and dance like a robot in the elevator! by about
floor six on the ride up we could start hearing the bass pounding. upon
reaching the top, we were greeted by a room filled with streamers, person-sized
mickey mouse balloons, and memorabilia from aaron’s first year of life, along
with dozens of rambunctious toddlers and children and their parents. the
highest concentration of morbidly obese, spoiled kids i’ve ever seen - like
maybe this is what they are doing every night is going to these parties. they’re
definitely not walking the streets of the tacloban i thought i knew. aaron was
dressed in a tuxedo, wearing a red bowtie, completely ambivalent to anything
occurring around him.
the festivities began of course with
a prayer, quickly followed and perfectly juxtaposed by two clowns gyrating sexually
to “talk dirty to me”, which obviously had to be loud enough that they could
hear it in manila. the clowns continued gettin it down to a few more r&b
songs themed around bootys; toddlers clearly in awe. then, some hired musicians
came out to take it down a notch with some popular valentines-themed pop songs
aimed more at the adults. parents could jump in kareoke style if they’d like.
then, it was food time: a lavish buffet with three types of pork including the
necessity at every filipino party: lechon - crispy-skinned spit fired suckling
piglet. waiters brought around soft drinks on gold-plated platters that were
guzzled by the morbidly obese young partiers. a chortling metrosexual wearing a
wizard’s hat and a suit who was clearly hired for his infectiously incessant machine-gun-style
laugh took the stage for jokes, and to referee a bunch of games for the kids.
also ones for the adults, including one for tim and i, who, as the visible
minority “guests”, raced to drink large baby bottles full of grape soda while
wearing bibs. they brought around cupcakes. there was a magic show that lasted
for over an hour. it involved fire. they brought around more desserts. there
was confetti falling from the ceiling. multiple types of chocolate things on
sticks were coming from somewhere. kids were drinking sugared juice from
special-produced bottles with aaron’s likeness on them, with an ingredient list
that read “cute: 100%, precious: 100%”, etc. the round kids were helping
themselves to more chunks of dripping fat off the roast pig. there was a game
where the parents got to jump in a free for all to reach expensive toys that
their children wanted that were hanging above them just out of reach. everyone
got huge plastic 3-d mickey-mouse heads that were filled with candies.
aaron, your parents got a new
mortgage for this party; sure hope you enjoyed it!
