Once in a while you should have a party.
I’ve never really been a big fan of birthday parties, at least not when it comes to my own birthday. I like other people’s birthday parties just fine as far as they go – you get to hang out with friends, eat some tasty food, and generally have a good time – but for my own birthday I usually prefer to do such things with my family. We share a nice meal and enjoy each other’s company, maybe play cards or something along those lines, and that’s pretty much all I want, even on the Big Round Number birthdays.
But this year it occurred to me that pretty soon so many of the people in my world would be haring off in different directions and it would be hard to gather them all together in one place and time, so perhaps it would be good to do something to mark my most recent birthday.
Of course I didn’t decide that until it was far too late to do anything about it on or near my actual birthday, embedded in the holiday season as it is. Fortunately the Movable Feast Tradition allows me to schedule holidays whenever they are convenient, so yesterday it was.
After some discussion Kim and I decided that it would be fun to do this at the local axe-throwing place, since who doesn’t like throwing axes at the wall? This place also has throwing knives and ninja stars, which are more fun and much easier to stick into the wall – it’s actually difficult not to get a throwing star to stick – so win all around, I say.
Plus this place doesn’t serve food, which meant that they were happy to let us bring our own.
We gathered last night and had a very nice time.
We got there a bit early to get set up before people arrived. The place is fairly small but it was big enough for what we wanted to do and it had four different bays for throwing pointy things on our side of the wall. You can’t ask much more than that.
I’ve never really been a big fan of birthday parties, at least not when it comes to my own birthday. I like other people’s birthday parties just fine as far as they go – you get to hang out with friends, eat some tasty food, and generally have a good time – but for my own birthday I usually prefer to do such things with my family. We share a nice meal and enjoy each other’s company, maybe play cards or something along those lines, and that’s pretty much all I want, even on the Big Round Number birthdays.
But this year it occurred to me that pretty soon so many of the people in my world would be haring off in different directions and it would be hard to gather them all together in one place and time, so perhaps it would be good to do something to mark my most recent birthday.
Of course I didn’t decide that until it was far too late to do anything about it on or near my actual birthday, embedded in the holiday season as it is. Fortunately the Movable Feast Tradition allows me to schedule holidays whenever they are convenient, so yesterday it was.
After some discussion Kim and I decided that it would be fun to do this at the local axe-throwing place, since who doesn’t like throwing axes at the wall? This place also has throwing knives and ninja stars, which are more fun and much easier to stick into the wall – it’s actually difficult not to get a throwing star to stick – so win all around, I say.
Plus this place doesn’t serve food, which meant that they were happy to let us bring our own.
We gathered last night and had a very nice time.
We got there a bit early to get set up before people arrived. The place is fairly small but it was big enough for what we wanted to do and it had four different bays for throwing pointy things on our side of the wall. You can’t ask much more than that.
They did provide one other game as well – you get a box of big nails and a heavy hammer and anyone who wants to join in takes a turn at pounding their nail into a tree stump with the skinny end of the hammerhead, one swing at a time, until someone wins. I actually did pretty well at this one, a legacy of my misspent youth building sets backstage, I suppose.
Axes, knives, and stars were indeed thrown though not in any real competitive fashion that I saw. Mostly it was just people enjoying the task at hand and that’s all you need.
I’m not entirely sure how I managed to do it, but I did get one of the knives to stick in by the hilt rather than the pointy bit.
Mostly, though, people hung out and spent time together, which is all you want of a party.
They even sang happy birthday to me before we dove into the cakes, which was lovely.
The joy of doing this somewhere other than your home is that all of it happens outside of your home, which means a whole lot less preparation and cleanup. Our friends Heidi and Travis did join us at home afterward for a bit, which was very nice, but eventually they too went home and it was just me, Kim, Oliver, Lauren, and Shai hanging out in the living room and following the conversation wherever it went.
Why it went to “strange sporting events” I don’t know, but that eventually led to us watching this year’s Florentine Calcio Storico, a collection of Red Bull Flugtag videos, and somebody’s compilation of the top 100 World Soap Box Derby runs, and in a darkening age it is good to have something that is pure absurdity now and then.
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