Yesterday we held a fundraiser carnival complete with facepainting, games, and cotton candy. It was great and we raised $642! And it brought back memories of previous parties we have had. We used to have a massive party every summer, and we probably ought to start them up again! We had a costume party with all you can eat cotton candy, and snow cones, carnival games, bouncy houses, cake walks, etc.
One year we decided to do a ping pong toss to win a goldfish. We got little glass vases and put beans in the bottom of some and some we put goldfish in, and lined them up. If the ping pong ball went in any vase, then you could win a gold fish. Simple right? Easy, fun and inexpensive since goldfish are only about 12 cents each.
We got everything ready and the night before the party went to the pet store and bought about 200 fish (the number of kids expected at the party) and put them in a five gallon bucket. In the morning I discovered 198 dead goldfish in the bucket! Now if you have ever had a dead fish you probably know that a burial at sea is the accepted funeral. Shall we just say that if you have 198 dead goldfish it is a much more lengthy process? We figured that maybe that many fish just didn't have enough oxygen in the bucket over night.
We had 200 kids invited to a party and a goldfish game all ready but no fish. What could we do but go buy more fish? So we did. Another 200 fish in a freshly-scrubbed bucket on the way to the park to set up. All was well. Well...until.
I was pretty busy setting up, and organizing games and welcoming guests and making cotton candy and checking the prizes and it wasn't until a couple of hours into the party that I checked on the fish game. When I went over, to my strong dismay I saw a little pile of dead fish on the grass, and then another little pile...and another. As I walked, I saw my son who was running the game, dip out another couple of fish and begin a new pile. I looked around and more carefully looked at the little kids circulating through the party in their cute little costumes, and to my horror saw many of them happily clutching plastic bags with a prize of brand new dead pets floating around in them. We quickly replaced the dead fish with live ones, and apologized and tried to not make a huge deal out of it.
As the day progressed I began to avoid looking at the plastic bags too closely because more often than not there was a floating rather than swimming fish in it. The grass around the park pavilion began to look like a goldfish cemetery, and there was an odor building in the area. Why the dead fish ended up on the grass didn't make sense until I realized that my son had used the grass when he had 15 kids at a time lined up to play the game and no time to do anything else with them, so the kids thought that is what you did with a dead fish.
Picture if you will the children of all of my friends and family, and friends of friends, walking around with a baggie full of a dead fish as their special gift from me.
And let's not even discuss the park clean up after the party. Ever again.
Once again Corinne throws a successful party!
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