the pinata

When i was a kid i never saw a pinata... never knew what it was. I am pretty sure it's the "Dora" factor working here. Dora is the Spanish sensation "educational" cartoon character that all the kids love and embrace the product lines. When Dora, or any character has a birthday party on the show there is always a pinata. Now since we are the consumer society our kids now all have pinatas at their birthday parties.

What we don't have is the culture to know how to do it. It is always a great comedy of errors to watch the pinata portion of the birthday party. When something is really part of your culture there is an intuitive sense of how to do things... there would be an older uncle who's great pride in life is hanging the pinata there would be areas where children waiting for their turn to bash a pinata with a hard stick would stand that would be far away from the child currently swinging madly at the pinata.

In our culture we see it as an opportunity to treat our children to more low quality candy and small plastic toys and the green light to swing a large bat madly with the hope that if you swing hard enough you just might get first shot at the candy.

In my experience the pinata is never hung properly in the first place so there is this meeting of men to try to solve the problem as women and children look on... i have seen 2 men standing on chairs holding a rope high above their heads and the pinata drooping at the midpoint between them and it gets worse from there... the last one i witnessed, the hosts lost a nice Wisteria plant.

There is also no protocol for the bashing... usually the most hyper and oldest boy gets a hold of the stick and attempts to seize his manhood by swinging madly with all other kids in close range.. this bring the adults in all screaming at once to their kids to stay back but it never works because a few minutes later all are again drawn in by the lure of sugar. This scenario repeats until somebody gets hit in the head with a stick, and then everybody moves way back and then slowly begin to sneak back forward again to ensure the comedy continues. Often times the pinata will fall from it's perch before it breaks open and then sooner or later somebody says enough is enough and rips the dam thing open sending the candy to the ground creating another mad scramble. Now the kids have had cake, soda, treats and more candy, and they have fulfilled their cartoon reality.

Ironic that in a world of fear and "safety first" we let our kids high on sugar swing big sticks to prove that "WE" as parents are A OK. This whole birthday culture has got to be stopped... i feel like the Grinch, but didn't the WHOS still sing on Christmas day.