IMPENDING EVENTS
Because my
eight-year-old is going to be a nine-year-old next week, we are hosting
Tigger’s Fantasmic Birthday Blast Sleepover here on Saturday night.
Because I am not religious, I can’t even cross myself. Somebody please do it for me.
No wait, on second thought, don’t. A
new study, reported today, attempted to determine whether having people
pray for you when you undergo coronary-bypass surgery improves your
chances.
It doesn’t.
The patients in the study were divided into three groups.
- This group had strangers praying for them, and they were told that was the case.
- This group received prayers, but they were told they weren’t getting any.
- This group got no prayers and were not told whether they were getting them or not.
The results: Patients in Group 1 had significantly more complications than those in groups 2 and 3. (There was no difference in how groups 2 and 3 fared.)
Hence, praying for other people does not improve their health, and if they KNOW you are praying for them, they do worse.
So, while I would appreciate your blessing over the sleepover, please don’t tell me about it.
In case anyone was wondering what shape of piñata I got for the revelers to smash, it’s a star. I couldn’t get anything cute, because of Ralphie.
See, years ago I was a special ed teacher. One of my classroom aides brought in a piñata for the kids to whack at our, ahem, Winter Holiday Party. It was an adorable snowman.
That snowman proved to be pretty tough. My students hit it and hit it, but it wouldn’t break. The three adults in the room hit it too. No luck. Finally we put it on the ground and beat it until at last it broke open.
Although he’d been
whaling on that snowman with the rest of them, Ralphie, a mostly
non-verbal little boy with Down Syndrome, burst into tears. He grieved that snowman, and wouldn’t even eat any of the candy.
So I figure the sweet little girls coming to the sleepover would balk at smashing a cute animal with a baseball bat. The star, on the other hand, will be shown no mercy.
Other party plans
include dancing, watching movies, playing with make up, and consuming
large quantities of snack foods until the wee hours of the morning.
Don’t worry about me and Technogeek. Just send along some discreet prayers. Very discreet.
Transvestite Rabbit 
Okay, this is me, not praying for you. And if I do, I won’t tell you.
I wouldn’t dream of praying for you. I do hope that Tigger and her friends have a good time, and I hope that you and Technogeek enjoy the party too. I’m pretty sure that parents are allowed to have a good time right along with the kids. Hoping isn’t the same as praying …is it?
This is rich!
As to the pinata, I think we nearly had someone in stitches over one of those. Cultural diversity can be a bloody thing,be careful!
Yikes! Is it time for Tigger’s birthday already???
Amazon.com here I come!
Because of this post I am going to be a millionaire…I’m heading off right now to start mass-manfacturing George Bush pinatas. Oh wait a minute…I could do Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Tom Delay, the list goes on and on…I’m going to be RICH, RICH, RICH…you get 10% for the idea.
I might cry if a star got destroyed but marklabouff has a great idea. The prayer study is a big relief.
Great snack fun for a small sleepover group, frosting, decorations, and graham crackers. They decorate them to make them look like people in sleeping bags. My girls never had any issues eating them and had a lot of fun making them. Pinatas are always fun. Mark’s idea….hee hee. Go for it!
I’m gonna be rich too. I will be asking for large sums of money to NOT pray for people.You can mail my $16.99 to…P.S. That party sounds like every night of my life… minus the pinata. Now who the hell was praying that I wouldn’t gain weight from all that snacking???!!!
Don’t worry. Praying’s not my thing. I’ll send a good thought now and then. Hope that’s not a problem.
Someone beat me to the “George Bush Pinata” thing. I figure that candy’s all the kids will ever get outta him.
Silent prayers for your sanity and evil thought of the star’s demise are at the fore front of my little mind right now. Since I prayed for you this will be the scenario: The first kid will loose hold of the bludgeoning device, sending it into something precious, the others will make fun of the frst kid and a fight will ensue. A kid you think is annoying will finally get his come uppance and you’ll feel vidicated over the lamp incident from seasons past. The second kid will hit the pinata on the first try and it will EX-PL-ODE sending candy shrapnel as far as the eyes can see and also hiding bits in nooks for the vacuum to choke on at a later date causing $36.00 worth of damage plus labor. Then the cand will be stale and the wrappers will be fused to the candy from being in storage since last summer.
Prayers were answered but everything still went to feces. Good job getting the neurotic to pray for you.
OMM (no spell check-deal with it.)
I hope it goes great! No praying… lol… Just don’t tell them about this *ahem* wonderful artist you know named *Starr* heh…I’ve really enjoyed having a name that is a common noun! lolSleepovers are cool… I still have fond memories of the ones I was at when I was Tigger’s age
Poor Ralphie! How sad.I can think of some appropriate pinatas…do they make ones of political figures?Happy birthday to Tigger!My thoughts are with you…..(Lord, be merciful of TR and TG).
Fun Fun, Silly Willy.
G
I don’t pray, and I’m not religious, but I have always wondered about praying. Could it be that it has some effect… not because of some higher power endowing us with his approval, but because there is possibly some strength in numbers when human brain power is concentrated towards a single goal. This study, however, did not prove much. If you read the fine print, the people were told to pray to help the person, but they were not even given their name (and family members and friends were told that it was ok to continue to pray for the person). Hmm, those that were praying, what… or whom… were they really praying for? It seems to me that if they’re concentrating brain power, then they should have something concrete to concentrate on.
That’s because group 1 lacked faith. I am not surprized. No, not at all.
There was a similar scenario here last weekend when AJ had his 13th birthday party. I hope no girls show up there with stinky shoes. And I’m Catholic so I crossed myself for you. Did you forget what today is?
…the doctor walks in and says, “Mr. X, I want you to know that we have people praying for you.” That would scare the daylights out of me and I believe in prayer! :O
There exist non-hitting Piñatas…..the Star would have ribbons, strategically placed…each guest would hold a ribbon and sing or go around in circles…without pulling the ribbon…once the song or game are over…everyone pulls the string and the goodies in the Piñata drop……
A none-violent Piñata……Perhaps not as much fun….but safer none the less.
nope no prayin for you from me, no sir ree bob, but if your night was really good, you will know who to come to and if was really bad, don’t blame me.
Hell with the Pinata.Pass me a Pina Colata.
Hope the party went well and that you survived to tell the tale. Brave you are.
Please pass along my happiest birthday wishes.
awww…poor Ralphie… he was probably traumatized for life!
RYC: Thanks, I thought he did a really artistic job myself, I felt the same way about how much the kids love each other..
EVERY pinata we have ever had was impossible to break open! We have resulted to “ribbons”. What I do is cut as many 10 foot lengths of ribbon as there are kids that will be at the party. Then I tightl tape one to the trapdoor at the bottom of the pinata. The rest I lightly tape or place to the inside of the trapdoor, then tape the filled pinata as lightly closed as it needs to keep stuff inside butto make it easy to open. Each child gets a chance to pull on a ribbon..OR we have ALL the kids pull the ribbons at once. ONE of them will be the one who gets to open the pinata and cause the mass jump of rugrats for sugar fortification.It also keeps my home owner’s insurance intact, because then I don’t have to worry about a lawsuit when one of the kids whomps the other in the head and causes brain damage *yeah like the little dues and dudettes aren’t already brain damaged…they are just trying to get money for it*.
Where te hell did you disappear to?Better come back soon or I’m gonna start praying for you!
I heard the same thing. I’m not wuite sure if I believe it or not. I’ve seen prayer work wehn nothing else has.
I can only imagine what the people on the operating room table thought when someone told them that they specifically weren’t being prayed for. I mean, I’m not religious, but I think if someone told me that I’d be pretty put off.Anyway, I saw this, and it made me think of you and your story about Little Bit’s self-flushing toilet fiasco. It’s an Opus cartoon, and you should probably go there before Sunday or else a new one might be in its place.