#86. Finally a Party (Friday, July 26, 2005)

What was your best day…of doing something low-key with your friends?

Up until the mid-teen years, the best shorthand for measuring a person’s social capital is probably the number of birthday parties they’ve been invited to in the past year. And in that sense, I was zero for the past fourteen months¹ – and was seriously starting to question whether I was meant to be the guy who would always be the afterthought in every social circle he thought he was in.²

So, when one of my good friends, Devin Pham, sent that e-mail to us a week earlier about this birthday party, my feelings could only be described a mix of relief and excitement. Especially since we had all taken classes ahead that July and were now finally done for the summer. This, plus my ten-year-old neighbor lending me his Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince book that had just come out, meant I had a pretty sweet couple of days ahead for me.

Perhaps exemplifying my inexperience with these things, on the Friday of the party I was the first one there by half an hour and actually followed Devin’s request for no presents. And of course the other three guys – Brian, Thanh, and Pei – got him presents. So I kind of pulled out a twenty from my wallet and just gave it to him. Smooth. But Devin, being the great guy he was, acted grateful.

Side note: In hindsight, I should have offered him one of the two lower bowl Ottawa Renegades³ football tickets (face value: $109 each) I had won in Careers class two days before for the luckiest reason ever. The CEO for a local web design firm was giving a talk, when Allan and I were called up to the front for a “situational problem”. The problem: You have two T-shirts left, and two clients – an established one and a new one – that each need two T-shirts. What do you do?

Well, Allan was asked first and he said: “The established client”. Thinking there was no other option, I said: “The new client”, and gave my obvious explanation. Apparently, the CEO liked my answer so much – as opposed to “one to each” – that he gave me, and only me, those two tickets.

It was just the five of us. So we put on the party hats and watched Team America: World Police on Devin’s computer. Then we went up to watch Constantine from his DVD, and his younger brother and sisters joined us. In the middle of that, we called for pizza, and apparently none of us knew how much we were supposed to tip the pizza guy; so Devin ended up tipping him something like 50 percent.

Devin was one of the best athletes in our grade, and he had a basketball net on his driveway and full volleyball court setup in his backyard. His brother joined us as we played three-on-three for a few hours. And, despite Brian injuring his hand rolling (unnecessarily) on the pavement and Thanh knocking the volleyball into the neighbor’s yard five or six times in a row, we all had a great time.

I think the defining aspect of this party, besides the simple fact that I was there, was how understated it was. That it was just a couple of good friends hanging out, rather than some crazy party, is ultimately what made the whole thing feel so meaningful after all these years.

Note that Matthew Robinson-Shaw’s party (#114) took place four months after this.
Not helping my cause was the fact that I hadn’t hosted a party myself since my 12th birthday two-plus years ago. Among other factors.
They played in the Canadian Football League for three years and…were not very good. They folded after four seasons of 4-14, 7-11, 5-13, and 7-11.