#16. Steven’s Last Birthday Party (Friday, December 6, 2002)
What was your best day…of getting along with your enemy?
As I’ve mentioned before (#47), during my adolescent years my relationship with Steven Fennessy would oscillate wildly between closest of friends and worst of enemies. The two low points would have to be:
- When he angrily threatened me, and I overreacted, leading to his suspension (sixth-grade)
- When he – obnoxiously confident because he had just gotten his first girlfriend a week earlier – goaded me into a severe crying fit in front of the whole class, and he used that to turn everyone against me (end of seventh-grade)
But between those two, there were also many, many other days at the positive end of that pendulum. Like this one.
This Friday after school was Steven’s birthday party, and he had invited almost every guy in the class, plus a bunch of our soccer buddies.
So that day, we all bring our hockey sticks to school (he’s got a ball hockey game planned to start) – getting the epic feeling started early. Then, after school, his mom and grandparents and older cousin drive us all in separate groups of 5-6 to his house. Then we meet up with several of his neighborhood friends and go to this big empty basketball court where the game begins.
The game goes on for a while, it’s pretty intense, and I actually get into a kind-of-conflict with Steven because I keep hacking his feet when I’m reaching for the ball (his cousin even asks us: “What’s going on between you two there.”), but this one – miraculously – ends right there. We finish the game and get back to his house.
For the next hour, all twenty plus of us are just hanging out in Steven’s basement watching him open his presents; and, as per custom, we react excitedly to each one. I get him a tournament pack (75 cards) for the latest Onslaught set of Magic: The Gathering (#20), because he specifically asked for “Magic cards” for his birthday after one of his friends taught him how to play. (This following a full year of him calling me a “big geek” for playing them.)
Side Note: When my family and I went to the Comic Book Shoppe the night before to buy his present, I noticed in the display case were all these packs from older Magic sets from 6-7 years ago – that I thought were completely out of print and highly valuable. I wasn’t going to ask my parents to buy me cards, so I tried to convince my dad to buy one of those older packs for Steven so I could live vicariously through him. But they were a bit more expensive, so my dad told me: “Why do you want to pay more for Steven’s present. He make you cry.” (true) After some arguing, I explained the whole thing to my mom, and she agreed to buy two packs for me in addition to the present for Steven. Awesome.
Then we all play/watch this Red vs. Blue first-person shooter game (whose name escapes me) on his GameCube and Mortal Kombat on his Sega. And soon, the pizza arrives. During the pizza dinner, I initiate a big burping contest; while, for some reason, we get into this extended debate about how messed-up the society is in The Giver (the book we were doing for novel study).1
Following that, we go to his big front yard and have a giant snowball fight, and that’s where the real fun begins. It becomes a two-sided battle with snow forts and everything, and it gets violent; but when the violence is in the form of soft spheres of semi-frozen water, it’s also insanely fun.
But after an hour of this, some of Steven’s neighborhood buddies try taking Derek Dunlop (#116, #96) “hostage” by dragging him from one side of the yard to the other, and Derek reacts by crying like a baby.
This annoys Steven, who shouts to Derek: “Get up and stop whining, you little baby. No one wants to hear you cry like that…you’re not getting invited to my next party.”
Shortly after, Steven’s parents see what’s going on outside, and Derek and Steven’s friends get brought in. A few minutes later, Steven’s mom calls out for Steven to come in.
A few minutes after that, the twenty of us outside can see Steven through the window, nodding in a serious way while staring ahead. Turns out he is getting lectured by his parents (about the Derek thing no doubt), right in the middle of his own birthday party. This goes on for a surprisingly long amount of time, at least half an hour or so, during which all of us outside are standing there not sure what to do.
I have to admit, that was the highlight of the whole party for me. In part, because the whole scene just looked hilarious in context. In part, because for once Steven was embroiled in a conflict that didn’t involve me – i.e. maybe it wasn’t just me that was the cause of all our problems.
Steven does eventually rejoin us – though he’s been told that he’s not going to have a birthday party next year, so he’d better make the most of this one.
He does, and so do we, as the snowball fight goes deep into the night.