I walk in after speeding to get my daughter’s cake which was the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since Willy Wonka, and notice the tables aren’t ready. The plates are still in plastic wrap and so are the table clothes. Panic struck me like a piano falling from a third floor apartment. I hate dishing out commands, but it had to be done as quickly and gently as possible. I’m at least trying to have cake table ready because that’s the thing these days. But plastic wrap and boxes and purses keep appearing on there. My mind is everywhere trying to do everything at once. Finally got the table set and the cake table decent. Kids are every where and since it was three or four different communities some kids were left out but so goes life. I finally get the cake table decorated with gifts (which I’m super grateful for). We round up the kids and prepare for the feast to begin which is a giant subway grinder neatly divided between four tables. The tables are adorned with a fairy, blue, and gold theme. You’d think feeding the beast (beast as in a mass of children shoved into a small room) would tame it, but let me tell you I’ve created a monster. My daughter (of course) begins some chant that sounded something like “pop-the-balloon” and you should have seen the fear in the adults faces when they came together in unison. My plan was to keep it moving by lighting the candles on the cake. So I grab the cake which was pretty heavy and lug it over in front of my daughter. The chanting grows louder and there’s an air in the room (which would properly be described as fear) of what was going to happen next. And somehow it shifted, it was no longer about popping a balloon. I pull out a match and whoosh a gust of wind which I think came from the thunderous chanting, blew out the match. I now realize why people can’t light things in horror films. I search the room for my closest friend who mind you has military experience and she gives me these eyes. They were big and I gave her the eyes like Save me. And I waved the matches as if they were a white flag. She (eventually) came to my side and we lit the candles together and the chanting slowed. Because fire does that. And then together they sang happy birthday in a way I was much more comfortable with. Thank God for best friends and creating monsters, because without them stories like these would never be written.