The Triumphant Warrior Comes Home to His Gerbil

Ian attended the quintessential seven-year-old-boy birthday party today. Only boys attended; I suspect girls were invited, but knew better than to accept. The invitation summoned the troops to the birthday garrison at thirteen hundred hours, or "1300" which, for the uninitiated who have never served in 'Stan or 'Raq (or now 'Bya) or attended a seven-year-old boy's birthday party, means "one o'clock in the afternoon." Unlike all birthday peer parties my children have attended to date, this one ran for a full three hours. All boys except Ian wore fatigues. Ian wore "brown" as part of the color scheme, but "brown" for Ian means dark orange, or, more correctly, Hannah Andersen's socialist-Swedish-nationalized-health-care orange and blue stripes. [It turns out that Ian doesn't own fatigues, somehow.] Ian turned out to be the sole "jack-in-the-box" in the army - a role he apparently created for himself. The platoon photo is pretty unusual, for that reason alone: a squadron of Ramboes with Binky grinning in the corner. If I were in the army, I would probably also be Binky.

I had contemplated bringing Peaches the Gerbil to the party when I picked up Ian, but I felt like there was too much potential for disaster, so I decided against it.

In any case, as soon as we completed the five-minute drive from the birthday boy's house to ours, Ian astonished me by doing directly to the gerbil cage and putting a frisky young Peaches on his outstretched right arm.

I thought I knew the answer, but somehow I still felt like I needed to ask:

"So, did you miss this guy?"

"Uh-huh. Even though I had fun, I missed him."

(May 1, 2011)