I remember what birthday parties were like when I was a kid. Sometimes we would end up at a place like a Show-Biz Pizza and Chuck E. Cheese and that was fine. Back then the places to go to see the latest in cutting-edge video games was one of those places. I know, this was back in the day when Pong was huge and dinosaurs walked the earth, but shut up. The best parties were the ones where you were invited over to a friend’s place and pizza was served and a movie was watched. It was at a birthday party when I was in sixth, seventh and eighth grade where I watched “Caddyshack” and “The Blues Brothers.” We also loved to watch “Animal House.” You could curse and watch naked people and it was great.

The worst parties were the ones that ended up at places like McDonald’s. It was always strange when you ended up in a McDonald’s where there was no slide or anything and just a roped off portion of the restaurant. There was nothing to do there except eat burgers and fries and maybe some ice cream. There was also an ice cream parlor place here at one time called Mahoney’s that people liked to have parties and it always sucked there too. I never liked playing group party games so it was never fun to play stupid games where you were supposed to suck liquid out of small baby bottles.

Still and all, no matter what, the parties were fairly calm affairs. Yes, I would imagine it was tension filled for the parents and having a house full of screaming kids had to be a mess. I never went to a party that had a magician or a clown and I am thankful for that. These days, however, I feel bad for any parent. Something has happened with kids parties these days and it really need to stop and it needs to stop now.

I have written about parenting before. It usually gets an interesting response when I do. I like to point out that I do not have kids but there are something things I would think a sane person would notice even if you do not have kids. The first thing would be not to spoil your children. It does them no good. It makes them feel like they are entitled to things and that the world owes them. I think this is happening too much these days.

At some point people started to believe that children’s egos were so fragile that not having the Blue Angels spell out their name in the sky would put them into rehab by the age of sixteen. Parents these days seem to bend over backwards until their spines crack in order to shelter their children from the real world. The real world is a harsh place. The real world tears people down. While I don’t recommend you have a birthday party for a four year old where the main attraction is a heroine addict shooting up, I also don’t think you need to have a reanimated Walt Disney drawing original Mickey Mouse cartoons either.

I was recently listening to a morning radio show where a professor was talking about his movement to create Pressure Free birthday parties. He was full of stories that had been sent to him of nightmarish birthday parties. At one party for a five year old the little boy whose birthday it was blew out the candles. A little girl at the party got upset because she wanted to blow out the candles. The mother of the little boy explained that it wasn’t her birthday and that when it was she could blow out the candles. At that point the mother of the little girl leaned in, re-lit the candles and let her daughter blow them out. What the hell is that mother thinking? Why on earth would that mother not step in and tell the girl she was behaving poorly? We are going to have a generation of Veruca Salts from Willie Wonka before too long.

This has apparently created much consternation among the people who make money by performing at birthday parties. There is an entire industry of people who dress up as clowns or put on stupid top hats and perform magic tricks. The parents are now calling these people after having them at their house one year to invite them back for the following year. However, they are now demanding that these people somehow improve their shows and come up with something different from what they did last year. People, this isn’t David Copperfield here this is some guy who is trying to make a little money on the side doing stupid sleight of hand tricks.

Of course now when you go to a party the guests are expected to leave with gifts. This never happened in my day and I know that makes me sound like a cranky old man. Well, if so, then turn my crank and let me ramble because I think that is insane. Is this some strange outcropping from movie stars getting huge gift baskets whenever they appear at any kind of awards show? There is one tale the man had where a group of kids showed up for a ten year old’s party and when the guests found out there were no gift bags they attacked and beat up the birthday boy.

This, of course, leads to people trying to out-do each other. If your next door neighbor has a magician then you have to have four clowns and a fire engine. Then the parent across the street has to have a team of magicians, Cirque De Soleil, and paratroopers parachuting into the party with smoke billowing from their heels. Then the people down the street need to have an air craft carrier in their swimming pool and Tom Cruise re-enacting scenes from “Top Gun.” You can see how slippery this slope can become.

Of course this is all insanity. How did this come to be the norm? Who on earth decided this was the appropriate thing to do for children? Who on earth doesn’t think this could only damage them in the future? Are parents so absolutely afraid to put their feet down for their kids that they are willing to go into hoc just for a birthday party?

Of course there is one show that will get you angrier than just about anything else and that is “My Sweet Sixteen” on VH-1 or maybe MTV or who really cares. Anyway, this show does nothing to make me feel empathy or sympathy for these people. I just want to reach through the television and whip each and every one of these spoiled obnoxious teenagers.

Maybe too many people are getting married when they shouldn’t or having kids when they shouldn’t. They don’t have time to spend with the kids on other days or their marriages end and the broken home leads to feelings of guilt. So the parents go overboard hoping that one day a year will make up for it. It doesn’t, so stop it. Buy a pizza and get a movie and tell the kid to shut up an watch.

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.