Looking at shoes calms me when I'm going off the deep end...

Today a girl's mom called me. She thanked me for hand delivering the invite to her daughter (after she said that she never received the invite), and then she told me that her daughter cannot attend because she has another party that night.

The party is on a Sunday night, remember.

Liar.

This is hard to talk about, but here goes: this just absolutely gutted me. Why would anyone sit home on a Sunday night rather than go to my son's bar mitzvah? What the hell makes this girl think that she is too good for my son and his bar mitzvah? What the hell is wrong with this girl's mother that she wouldn't put her foot down and say, "you got invited, you should go"?

Now all of that said, what do I need with a girl who doesn't want to be there?

Well, there is actually a somewhat rational answer to that question:

FBS has many friends, from many different groups. Some are like him - not quite "there" yet when it comes to the whole girl/boy thing. Not yet into "hooking up" (yes, there are some 12 year olds who "hook up" every weekend). Not even into flirting yet. But some are WAY "there". Some of the kids he is friendly with, whose bar mitzvahs he has attended, who are coming to his bar mitzvah, are WAY into girls. They "like" girls. They talk about who "likes" who. They have drama relating to who likes who. And some of these kids are majorly into girls - not just flirting with girls, but "hooking up" with girls. Whatever that means at the age of 12 or 13.

Most of the girls that are, in fact, attending FBS's bar mitzvah are not "there" yet. They may "like" boys - but still just "crushes", really. But they aren't doing much about it. They certainly aren't "hooking up", whatever that means.

So, the concern, silly as it may or may not sound, is that the boy-girl "mashup" at the B-Mitzvah will be "off", that the dance floor will be empty, that kids will be bored, that it will...oh my god, just say it...suck.

OK, rational mind, take over now, please? Here goes: none of this is in my control. The girls who are coming to the B-Mitzvah are the girls who SHOULD be coming, the girls who WANT to come. And they are going to dance and have a blast. And the boys who are unhappy because "their" girls aren't there, will just have to deal. And that isn't something that I should be worrying about at this point. I sent out the invites, the chips fell where they did, and that's that. Besides, a great MANY of the boys at the party won't care at all. They're going to eat the great food and dance to the tunes and hang with each other and maybe dance in the same zip code as some cute 12 year old girls. And it will be fine. It will be great.

And it is WRONG that I am stuck in my head like this when I should be rejoicing that I have a beautiful family and that my FBS is an amazing kid - a handsome, brilliant kid who has made more friends than I ever could have imagined in the short time we have lived in this town (less than three years), a kid whose talent at baseball has earned him respect from his peers, a kid who somehow just DOES the "right" things - he's just wired that way because he certainly didn't learn it from me.

This is just a party, just a night. If it isn't every teenage dream I ever had, that shouldn't matter. It's a miracle, and I should be grateful, that we've come to this point, at all, healthy and whole and for the most part, happy. And really, one ought to be careful what one thinks one wants to wish for...

Pardon me while I go smack myself in the head.

BMZ