A List of Best Intentions

I like kids. I really do.

Some of them are really freakin’ annoying, though. I gotta admit that.

I got to experience their obnoxious behavior firsthand, too.

I wanted to crash a kid’s birthday party – number fifteen. Down in town there was a Chester Cheese’s that was always crowded with little kids, even on school days. It was crazy.

And if there was a birthday party goin’ on, you had to be on “The Guest List.” It was like trying to get into a club. I guess they didn’t want creepers or something showing up. Still, it was kinda dumb – Tanglewood, besides the occasional stabbing, didn’t have many news-worthy moments.

Still, plans were plans. It had been years since I went to a Chester Cheese’s, and I wanted to go back; provided I could fit into the playpens, it’d be a blast.

I convinced Cody to go too, and we made sure we had a fool-proof back-story to explain to the “bouncer.”

“So you guys are cousins of the birthday boy,” the thirty-something greeter deadpanned, “that they forgot to list.”

“Yup!” Cody and I said proudly in unison.

He looked at us like he was instead thinking of ways to kill himself. “Names?”

Cody and I exchanged looks of confusion. “Huh?” I said.

“Gimme your names.”

“Jonathan Coolis,” Cody responded immediately. Lucky kid and his instincts.

“Uh…Rusty Shackleford,” I told him.

The guy looked over the list and rolled his eyes. “Look, as long as you don’t tell ‘em I was the one who let you in, you two go ahead.”

And once we stepped inside, holy crap, I regretted it.

Bright lights from arcade machines blinded me. Whack-a-Mole, racing, shooter games…combined with the shrieking kids, it all made my ears ring and my head hurt.

Everywhere, little kids were running here and there, yelling at each other or screaming for the hell of it. It smelled as if this whole place needed a diaper change.

My first impression?

“Oh my God,” I gasped.

“Oh, no,” Cody copied.

I had to pause for a moment in order to take it all in. If I jumped right in, I thought my head would explode. How could one birthday party have this many kids? The one turning five couldn’t possibly know more than thirty people. It seemed insane and I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

“Can we leave?” Cody asked.

I hesitated, but before I caved and left, I saw the most promising thing I’d seen all day.

An open ball-pit.

I pointed toward it with stars in my eyes. “Cody. Look.”

He saw it too, and his jaw dropped. “Oh my God.”

“I know! Let’s go!”

We pushed through the crowds of kids in order to get to the beacon of light, relentlessly tearing through brats in Spongeboy shirts and with party favors hanging from their drooling mouths. It was nothing short of a miracle that the ball-crawl was totally empty.

I dived in first, bellyflopping onto hundreds of soft plastic balls meant to break my fall. Nostalgia overtook me; like the kids running wild here, I went here all the time and that reminded me of those days. Cody followed, and we ended up swimming through brilliant bright colors.

It was a blast, actually. We kept throwing the balls at each other, just enjoying the solitude of being alone. For once, the sounds of screaming children were muted, and even though I had my stupid cast on from jumping off a building and breaking my wrist, it was still incredibly fun.

I should’ve known that it wouldn’t last for long, though. Right as I pelted Cody in the head with a yellow ball, the entrance to the pit opened and a little boy with spiked hair was looking at us intently.

Then, with his hands cupped around his mouth, he screamed, “BALL PIIIIIT!!”

And as if they were a tsunami, tons of kids leaped into the mess with us and started flailing around, causing Cody and I to make like bananas and split. You couldn’t make us flee any faster if there were flames under our butts.

We stumbled out like drunken sailors, grasping the foam poles that lined the entrance to the pit. “What the hell…” Cody coughed.

“We gotta find somewhere else,” I urged.

Both of us looked around frantically for somewhere – anywhere – where we could be incognito and stay hidden until the party was over. All of a sudden, Cody pointed to our left. A network of tubes and slides were set up along the framework of the area, high above the hustle and bustle of kids. The gears in my head began spinning and I grabbed Cody by the wrist.

“We can hide up there,” I suggested. “Then, when they leave, we can come out and play all the games!”

Cody looked at me funny for a moment, and then he went along with it.

We crawled up the dirty plastic tubes into the heart of the pipes. Inside the network, it was dead silent – I couldn’t hear a thing other than the fait sound of screaming brats. Yellow, blue, red, and green segments alternated, casting colored shadows over us. An occasional window shed some perspective on the area below us; we were above the entire game room.

I stopped, looking down.

“Look at all those little bastards,” Cody chuckled.

“I know.”

A minute later, he adjusted himself inside the tiny tube and asked, “Hey, wait…how much do you weigh?”

“We ain’t gonna break nothing. Chill, bro.”

We continued crawling through the deserted tube paths, every so often looking out the windows to see what we’d have the option of playing with when all these people left.

Still, it was kind of odd to me that nobody else was in these tubes. This was fun enough; why weren’t we being trampled by little kids here, too?

Cody grabbed my arm. “Wait. Look.”

When I glanced out the window, I saw the party room. This was where the monsters ate their cake and watched in jealousy as the birthday kid opened their presents. Three huge tables held big wrapped-up gifts and one gigantic cake right below our asses.

Nearby the scene was somebody hanging their head in a rat costume.

Suddenly a flood of children tore in, rippling through the peaceful air and making a mess. A team of parents and staff shielded them from the cake.

“After this, they always leave. It’s a standard,” Cody said. He was right.

“I guess we’ll just chill here until they go,” I shrugged.

Things seemed to be going smoothly. We had it all worked out, and with the exception of a kid crying every so often, it went pretty fast.

But out of nowhere, a loud creaking noise filled the tube.

Cody and I looked at each other, terrified.

“What was that?” he whimpered.

The noise sounded again; I jumped.

And that, my friends, is how I literally crashed the party.

The tube snapped right at the seams, and while Cody and I screamed and held onto each other for dear life, we tumbled out. It was about a fifteen-foot drop from the ceiling to the floor, and it sounds scary on paper.

We had our fall broken, though. By what? Chocolate ice-cream cake. And a table. And a Mega Soaker water gun.

Kids yelled at us as we hit the ground, running away in terror. Really, who wouldn’t? Two teenage boys just fell from the sky. I’d be scared too.

Once I wiped the frosting from my eyes, I looked over at Cody, who ended up landing on a Pogo Stick. We made eye contact, and he sort of smiled. But it was more of a sheepish smile, unlike the one I shot at the crowd, which just said, “Oh my God, we’re screwed, please don’t kill us.”

We looked at them all, and not a single kid looked pleased.

“He ruined the cake!” one girl screamed, pointing at us.

I pulled my elbow out of chocolate and stood up, looking at the damage. That cake was destroyed. Bits and pieces were splattered all over the place – on the wall, on the floor, on my butt…for a second I felt guilty.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but I couldn’t say a word.

Cody got up and pushed me out of the eye of the scene. Always the master of cover-ups, he grinned and we left the Chester Cheese’s with, “Jonathan Coolis and Rusty Shackleford, your neighborhood party crashers. Later.”

Literally.