My 12 year old daughter went to her first real party last weekend. I was eager to volunteer for carpool duty so that I could sniff out the tween party scene. What I discovered brought back all kinds of memories…some of which I may still need to work out in therapy.

In case you’ve forgotten the definition of a “real party”, allow me to refresh your memory. A real party is one in which there are both boys and girls in attendance and hopefully of somewhat equal numbers, parents are not in the room constantly but checking in every 10 minutes (and listening from somewhere if they’re worth their salt), and dancing. There has to be dancing. Bonus “real party” features include a strobe light and the game of Truth or Dare.

Do you remember your first real tween party? Good Lord, I sure do.

I, too, was in the 7th grade. My best friend and I decided to host the party together (much safer and as I found out, still the norm) at my house on St. Patrick’s Day weekend. Aaaahhhh, the year was 1986, my hair was feathered, my skirt was short and I wore pink heels with baby doll socks and pantyhose. (Yes, that ZZ Top video made quite the impression on me.)

My mother and step-father agreed that we could have up to kids over. I think it ended up being 6 girls and 5 boys or something like that. We had steamers and balloons, pizza and chips, and one hell of an early MTV mix cassette in the boom box.

We were more than ready for romance and drama as the clocked ticked closer to 7pm. My friend and I envisioned our party being like the prom in the feed barn at the end of Footloose. All the cute boys were coming and our hair looked good, so what could go wrong?

We soon realized that boys at this age behave strangely in real party situations. Flirting on the playground where he can show off on the court while he goofs with his friends is much different than sitting on your ugly green floral couch next to the Barbie camper becoming bored and restless.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that instead of fighting over slow dancing with me to the Purple Rain soundtrack, the boys wanted to jump like monkeys and tear down all of our carefully hung green and white streamers. Boys will be boys I guessed so I did what I thought had to be done – I went up and told on them. Really, it wasn’t going well. I begged my mom to just yell from the top of the stairs. They’d listen and settle down, I just knew it. Instead, something else happened. What occurred that night at our first real party is still referred to in my family as The Shit Ass Incident or more accurately, the most embarrassing moment of my entire life.

Rather than shouting down the stairs in a stern voice as I requested, my mother acquiesced to my step-father when he said he’d handle it. He came down the stairs, rounded up the bandit boys and herded them into the laundry room.

As far as the exact exchange between them that night in the room where we folded the socks, I cannot be certain. I do know that upon their release, the boys were giggling and snickering as though they had enough material to headline the stand up circuit for some time.

Looking back, that is a very accurate description. I was teased for years following that party. To this day, if you were to ask Steve, John or Chris, “What did Kim’s step-dad say to you in the basement at her 7th grade party?” they would break out in a howling laughter from the depths of their being and most likely wear a grin for the rest of the day.

What did he say? Ugh…it’s still embarrassing to share. I wasn’t in the room but from what I gathered as this incident continued to haunt me was the following:

“Now you boys better to listen to me”, he said with his finger wagging. “You are going to start behaving yourselves and stop acting like a bunch of shit-asses down here. If I see you carrying on like this again, some heads are gonna f*cking roll!”

Yes.

He. Cussed. At. Them.

And. Threatened. Them.

I could have died right there.

And who even says “shit-asses”?

What’s interesting to note is that he (my step-dad) couldn’t get respect from a fly. In day to day life, he was a bald, dorky, church-going postal worker who let loose and had a John Wayne moment with underdeveloped social life. As you can guess, this was not an easy thing to get over. (And as you can read, I’m not.) Kids can be evil with the teasing.

After that failure of what was a promising Hallmark preteen party, I swore off hosting for good. I held true (except for the annual New Year’s Eve soiree that my parents were unaware of through high school) and fought doggedly to recover my fragile reputation.

As I drove to pick up the girls from their party last week, I realized that I am still a wee bit put off at my step-dad for that night in the 7th grade. He lost his cool and in turn, caused me to lose a good chunk of mine. Bottom line: Tweens and teens can be brutal to each other socially and we as parents really need to take care to not add weapons of mass destruction to their arsenal by being big fat dorks. I’ll try and put my own advice to good use when my daughter hosts her own real party soon. Or I’ll just hide.

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