It’s not a party until the cops show up…
To a five year old’s birthday party.
Maybe I should go back to the beginning.
A few weeks ago, we got an email from a local trampoline place that they were doing very inexpensive private rentals of the whole space, and we decided to do it as a group with our quarantine “bubble”. One of the kids had a birthday coming up, so we decided to celebrate his birthday at our private trampoline park party to justify renting the place out.
One mom called and booked it, and we all pitched in for the cost with Venmo.
When we told the kids the plan, they exploded with enthusiasm and how-much-longers. On the way, the kids, and frankly us too, smiled and chattered with anticipation of running and playing, playing basketball, dodgeball, and doing the trapeze. It’s so hot, and we’ve all been trapped at home - it sounded amazing to get out and go somewhere new to run free.
When we were about five minutes away, my phone vibrated with a text - “There’s no one here.”
Tommy and I flashbacked to the time we took a bus full of 25 kids on a field trip to Peter Pan Mini Golf in Austin and the teenager who was supposed to work didn’t show up. That situation didn’t end well — I had a bad feeling about this.
When we pulled up, we conferred in the parking lot with our friends. The kids repeatedly asked what was going on, why weren’t we going in, and we all dodged their questions. We verified that there was in fact a credit card charge, but weirdly, no confirmation email or phone call. Tommy walked up to the door and looked in, then tried the door. The door popped open, and we all saw him walk inside. So we gathered up the kids and the donuts and snacks and presents and headed in.
Immediately inside the front door are some picnic tables, so we set our stuff down. Tommy walked to the back yelling “Hello? Hello?”
No answer. The lights are mostly out. No sign of anyone.
We notice the burglar alarm going off, quietly. Well, we figure, that will alert someone and hopefully the employee will appear from the back or show up for work. We figured it would only be a couple minutes, probably just someone running late. It happens.
It’s an odd situation - we are inside, but by ourselves. We paid and booked to be there, and the door was open. Do we leave? Do we stay?
We try to call again but it just goes to voicemail.
We decide to feed the kids donuts and drink coffee and hope that someone shows up.
Thirty minutes into the scheduled party time, the kids are done with donuts and getting restless. We are still unsupervised in the trampoline park, mulling over what we should do next. Finally, we decide to let the kids jump. This place requires their special branded socks, which most of us had already. We know the rules, so we self-regulate and follow them by dutifully putting on the special socks, even though no one is there to enforce this arbitrary rule. This small act of compliance bolsters our confidence and sense that we are not breaking the rules. One by one, kids and adults head for the trampolines.
It’s Theo’s first time at a trampoline park, and he is thrilled, running around, trying to jump. A dodgeball game gets organized, and the balls are lined up on the middle, ready to start. One of the moms is deep into the electronic jumping game where a series of lights flash and she jumps to hit them before the lights change.
We have no idea how long this will last or how it will end - will another party show up at 11 and we just say, “Floor’s yours”?
About fifteen minutes after we get on the trampolines, an employee walks in the door with steam coming out of her ears. One of the dads was hanging out by the door, so she addressed him first.
“Didn’t you think it was a little weird that no one was here?”
“Um, yeah, we thought it was weird.” It was definitely weird.
The mom who booked it heads over to talk to the employee. She motions to us that we all have to get off the trampolines. So we gather the disappointed children and herd them back to the picnic tables. Theo has an absolute fit, screaming and throwing himself around when I try to take him away from the trampolines. Once we get back to the front area, he keeps trying to escape and run back for the trampolines, so I spend the next ten minutes chasing him, catching him, and carrying a thrashing toddler across the entry way.
We all watch the interaction between our representative mom and the manager, trying to imagine what’s happening. She’s showing her payment on her phone, recounting the details of booking. The manager is chastising her because the policies and procedures say that she would receive a confirmation email. The mom points out that she doesn’t work there, and wouldn’t know that. They go back and forth.
Finally, one of the dads suggests opening presents while we are all waiting, which is a great idea and keeps the kids occupied for ten more minutes.
The employee walks in the back to call the corporate office, and she comes back with a changed attitude. Instead of scolding, she’s apologizing, promising the best kids birthday party ever when we re-book for another day. She ends up refunding our money and re-booking us. She won’t allow us to stay because they don’t have the requisite number of staff on site to supervise us.
Good, responsible adults that we are (if you still believe that), we start packing up our stuff. As we are walking out, the police show up. It’s just one officer, and he starts chatting, and says that he had two calls at once, a domestic violence call and a call that a bunch of families had broken in to the trampoline park and were having a birthday party. He responded to the domestic violence call first, so it took a while to get to breaking up our break-in. He seemed to find the whole story funny.
(I will note that this whole experience is likely reflective of the white privilege we get all the time. We were pretty sure that even if the police came, we wouldn’t actually get in any trouble and that the police would find the humor in the ridiculous situation, a grace I wish everyone would get.)
The crazy thing about all of this is that it took two mistakes at the perfect time to create this very memorable party - booking a private event and not recording it anywhere, and leaving the door unlocked. Either one alone, no strange situation. As it was, I attended the most memorable five year old birthday party of my life and left with a story to tell and a free do-over private trampoline park playtime. One of the dads is turning 43 soon, near our rescheduled date, so he is picking out his birthday boy shirt now. Just waiting on him to pick a theme for our do-over birthday jumping party…
Right now, when the days all blend together in a wash of sameness, this experience delighted me through sheer surprise. It felt like being young again and doing something you shouldn’t do, not knowing what would happen. I find great pleasure in learning words in other languages without an English translation, and while I can identify the feeling of getting away with something little, I can’t think of a word in English to contain it in one word. If you know one, leave it in the comments.
We finished up our morning drinking Champagne and chatting in my backyard, reliving the thrill of the party and our brief, wild, unsupervised jumping time during which we all wore the required special socks for safety and responsible rule-following.