A Birthday Party
An Early Childhood Story
A Birthday Party
Being invited to a birthday party was a big deal! School was an exciting adventure and it became clear very early on, that there were the popular kids and the not so popular.
Somehow, I don’t think that I was in the popular group, but I was invited to this birthday party and was excited for days before it.
I can’t remember if I had any say in what present I was going to bring - but I am pretty sure that it was a book. That was the usual gift in our family.
On the day of the party, I was all dressed up in my blue lacy type dress with white socks and patent leather Mary Jane style shoes. White of course.
Even though I was only 6 years old, I walked to the party by myself. Children in Germany have much more freedom to move about freely - maybe in the States at that time too.
Today, a parent might get arrested if they let their small child walk to a friends house half a mile away without an adult in tow.
I remember feeling a bit off on the way to the party - but by golly, if Dagmar Otto was inviting, I was going!!!
Children’s birthdays in Germany - at least at that time - were usually an afternoon occasion with cake and hot or cold chocolate drink, depending on the time of the year. You placed your presents somewhere and to the best of my memory - there was no opening of the gift ceremony at those parties.
Truthfully, I don’t remember. But judging from my instincts today, presents were not opened in the presence of the giver. Now, if I get a gift, I have to remind myself that the cultural expectation is to open it right away.
Back to long, long ago.
The table was set with nice plates and cups and silverware as is the custom for the coffee and cake invites that to this day are part of the German culture. I am sure there was plenty of whipping cream to be had. After all, what good is a cake without whipping cream!!
I was a chubby little girl and I liked to eat. Maybe there was even my all time favorite to be had - Schwarzwälder Kirsch Torte!!! Feeling nauseated or not - it is not polite to say no to cake. Especially when you love it so much.
After our cake party, we played some games. One of them is called the egg walk. Two teams are formed and the players line up at the start line. The first has a spoon in hand with a raw egg on the spoon.
Go!
The first player of each team walks/runs as fast as they can to a mark and then back to the waiting players. The trick is to not let the egg fall to the ground.
Once back at the start area, the returning child has to transfer the egg to the second kid’s spoon and they start running - probably more walking - to the mark and back.
If the egg falls and breaks, the player has to return to start and go again.
The team that has all its players back home first is the winner.
I hated those games!
But we all had to play.
It might have been during that game, or maybe the next, that I was overcome with the urge to throw up.
So, I did.
That was the end of the party for me.
Maybe my parents were called and they came to get me. That meant that they walked to Dagmar Otto’s house and we walked back together since we didn’t have a car. Or maybe the host’s had a car and took me home.
All I know is that I found myself in the hospital the next day.
I was six years old and there were maybe 10 beds in the room I was in. We had to stay in bed and parents and other visitors were only allowed to come during the official visiting hours.
Visiting hours were once a day for one or maybe two hours. I am sure my mom tried to come and visit me and maybe my oldest brother did too. He was 16 at the time and allowed to come in.
Children weren’t allowed to come as visitors and my little brother was only 3 years old. I don’t think my sister and other brother were old enough to come either.
Nurses were wearing white, perfectly starched uniforms with little stiff caps pinned to their hair. Many were nuns, or at least trained by nuns. That is who ran the nursing division of the hospital.
Of course, all I knew is that I was there alone.
And I was not allowed to eat.
Only some kind of hospital pudding since they weren’t sure what was going on.
The preliminary diagnosis was active appendicitis and that is nothing to mess with.
Life, or rather, the routine at hospitals has never made sense to me. People are supposed to heal. And sleep is such a powerful agent of supporting the body to return to a state of health.
But if you are a patient in the hospital, it seems that every time you fall asleep and finally have reached that state of blissful slumber, someone comes into your room or to your bed to perform a procedure that usually involves some pocking and prodding.
That is true today and was even more so then. Only different.
For some reason, it was so, so very important to take the temperature of us poor children several times a day.
Those were the days before the fancy machines that can touch your forehead or just need to hang out a little in your ear to give the right temperature reading. Or even the under the tongue devices that are used in some offices today.
No dice.
Those were the days of the thermometers filled with a little drop of mercury that rose up in the little glass tube in the middle of the temperature scale. Actually, the whole thing was made out of glass and was certainly breakable.
We all know that we don’t want mercury escaping and rolling around on our bed, floor or anywhere close to us.
There were three ways the thermometers were used.
One could put them under the tongue and hold them still there for a few minutes.
That option was not a good one for children since children rarely hold still - unless they are very, very sick. But even then is a chance of the child biting down and we have the rolling mercury ball we do want to avoid.
The next option was to hold the thermometer under your arm. It had to be placed just right and one had to hold the arm close to the body for up to 10 minutes to make sure that the right temperature was reached.
This was and is the most unreliable method to get a good reading and no self-respecting hospital would utilize it. And then, there is the fact of glass, children and mercury balls.
That one was not used.
The last, most reliable (or so they say) method is to insert the instrument into the butt. Yup. No fun at all. Vaseline played a role in this procedure and the poor child needed to lay patiently on the side while a nurse did the deed. They made sure to hold on to the thermometer and to prevent any rolling about.
The nurse also watched the clock - it was either three or five minutes before the torture instrument was removed. They read the results, noted them in the chard and the used thermometer ended up in a jar filled with some kind of liquid.
Fun times.
The temperature had to be taken several times a day. This was certainly not one of the highlights.
After a few days in the hospital, I felt much better. But still, all I got to eat was some kind of pudding. That went on for a week and I finally must have complained to my parents enough - and they in turn to the nurses. I was served a meal of spaghetti with red sauce.
Yummy!!!
Surely now I could go home!!
Not so.
The next day, the doctor informed my parents that they decided to operate and take out my appendix. Their reasoning was that I was already in the hospital and had not eaten for that week and they might as well do it.
Hello!! Remember the spaghetti with the red sauce?
Of course, the doctor won and had me on the operating table the next day.
The result was another two weeks in the hospital with mostly pudding and the first battle scar of life.
Actually, the second. But the first is a different story.
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Oh my goodness! What a day you had!
Birthday parties were a big deal, but I wasn’t invited to very many of them. I went to my younger cousin’s parties, and maybe one or two friends parties, but that was it.
So sorry you had to go to the hospital and have surgery, but pudding is always a good thing!
Great story!
Thank you :) It was so long ago - but I did remember her name :) And that I felt really bad.
Or maybe I just remember stories told - you know how memory works :)
I loved attending birthday's too and we were allowed to walk around a lot more when I was six. I used to babysit my siblings during the day at six!
I also remember the thermometer in the butt drill and glad they don't have that anymore. I guess that's something the younger generation wouldn't know about. And, they did use to keep us in the hospital a lot longer after any procedure--seems today like they're all to happy to operate and send you home that very day!
ha - I am sure glad that the thermometer in the butt is ancient history now.
And I feel sad that kids aren't able to run free like we did - but the world is different here too. Just even from the aspects of cars everywhere and nobody looking out for bikes and pedestrians...
And let's not even get started with weird people, drug dealers targeting young kids, and...
Well you certainly had me enthralled, and exciting birthday party turning to a stay in the hospital. Was it sponge and custard pudding? Thermometers used to be so brutal, you did make me wince a little. And after all that having your appendix cut out - what an experience.
Were you put off Birthday parties for life?
#thealliance #witness
No, not really. I don't think that I associated the hospital as a consequence of attending birthday parties :) And I think that was a time in the medical history of man where removing appendixes was almost a hobby of the surgeons LOL
And no sponge with the pudding. Just a bland white slime 🤪
Today, they would never let you stay in bed that long. It is up and out as quickly as possible ...
Parties sound so nice then! I dislike all the disposable party stuff nowdays, and I've never liked opening gifts in front of people. What a shame this party ended in the hospital.
But I remembered it LOL
I am with you and it took me a while to understand how I was actually (probably) offending people when not opening the gifts in front of them. I still have to force myself to remember and do that.
And I so dislike - especially at children's parties when the big gift opening starts. For one, the child has no time to enjoy each gift and it always seems to me that it is the big comparison game - who brought the best gift. Who spent the most...
Children's parties always make me feel awkward because I'm that guest that buys children books instead of the super fun toy from the commercial. The kid is like "oh a book" and tosses it aside :) It is definitely a big comparison game.
I am the one now who doesn't give a gift :) My grandkids have sooooooo much and the amount of stuff they get on their birthdays is insane.
and I couldn't compete with the other grandma anyway...
I can see now why it's such a challenge to plan an exciting birthday party for you. You have set a high bar. :-))
You mean that if it isn't followed by a stay in the hospital - it is no good? LOL
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Thank you so very much!!
Oh my, what a long, boring, lonely hospital stay you must have had! Was there a TV in your room? When I was a little girl, we usually had the neighbor girl over for supper and birthday cake. My older sister and I shared her for a friend, since she was between us in age, and we lived out of town with few neighbors. Sometimes we went to her house for her birthday, too. I remember attending only one or two other birthday parties.
No TV :) Just games...
it is so long ago that I just remember bits and pieces - and I was only 6 years old :)
A Wonderful read as your articles mostly are. Do you celebrate birthdays the same way?
thank you. If I celebrate - then coffee and cake might be involved :) I try my best to skip the hospital part.
And whatever I do, real dishes are involved. 😄
That is still some celebration. Skip the hospital part and stay the best .
Happy for you
Thank you for entering our pic-a-topic writing contest Marianne. Your story brought back some memories.
The only birthday party/s I remember being invited to as a young boy, was from a classmate every year. She would invite me every year from the age of about seven, through six grade.