That Big Kid Ellen #21: Host a themed birthday party
The tagline for my 4th birthday was “Ellenosaur is four” — a dinosaur-themed party for a little girl who claimed to love dinosaurs because her favorite movie at that age was “The Land Before Time.”
However, it turns out that I didn’t really love dinosaurs at all.
I actually had two birthday parties that year, lucky duck. One with friends that was Disney-themed (specifically The Little Mermaid from the looks of the cake and party cups) that was held on the weekend at one of the first Disney stores in Illinois. The other one was with just my mom and my godparents that was all about dinosaurs on my actual birthday (a Thursday).
The Disney party was a total hit. I was happy. I wore Mickey Mouse ears the whole time and some sweet pink overalls. There were no people dressed up as Disney characters to ruin the moment (I hated those people). It was an all-smiles event as far as I’m concerned.
I only mention the other party because it’s the only birthday photo I have from that year. The dinosaur party seems to have been only captured on my mom’s camcorder and has become infamous home footage in our family.
My mom started by filming an unassuming yet on-theme cake. Vanilla frosting covered with little dinosaur sprinkles and “Ellenosaur is 4” written in my mom’s handwriting with pink icing. Four candles stuck out of the top of the cake. Classic.
There’s footage of me, with my flawless bowl cut hairstyle, trying to decide on a flavor of ice cream with my godmother and godfather. I don’t remember what flavor we landed on, but we were giggling and having a grand time.
Then comes the traditional Happy Birthday song — my eyes have grinning shadows under them from the way the candlelight hits my big cheeks in the dark. I have a toothy grin similar to the one from the Disney party photo, and I dramatically blew out the candles after taking a pause to think of a wish.
Pretty typical birthday party so far.
Then the footage changes and we are suddenly inside the Stratford Square Mall in Bloomingdale, IL, about 15 minutes from my childhood home in Schaumburg, IL. It’s darker than usual for a mall, the steam of dry ice or a vapor machine hanging heavily in the air, and there are a lot of people in the shot just slowly milling around. My godfather is seen carrying me when the camera pans over to us, my little face buried in his shoulder.
I am sobbing.
You can hear my mom trying to cheer me up as she brings the camera around to zoom in on the scene that is disturbing me. Set up in the middle of the mall are giant “Dinamation” dinosaurs — rubbery, animatronic versions of lifelike dinosaurs. There are multiple tableaus of the dinosaurs in their habitats, with barely perceptible movements of their heads or limbs, totally unimpressive special effects for 2022 standards.
But for 1992 standards, these things looked alive and real and ideal fodder for childhood nightmares. I can only imagine that they were the inspiration for the terrifying dinosaur scenes in the 1994 movie “Clifford” with Martin Short.
I found some info about the exhibit thanks to the endless archive that is the interwebz. The Chicago Academy of Sciences used to host an annual touring dinosaur exhibit called “Dinosaurs Alive!” and this mall near my hometown was one of its stops. I found an article in the Chicago Tribune from a couple years later that makes me feel pretty validated in my fear of these dinosaurs (four-year-old Mark was pretty terrified of them according to the reporting).
There’s also an article entitled “The Decline of the Dinamation Dinos: How One Man’s Robots Became Passe” (possible paywall) that talks about the extinction of the man who started Dinamation International Corp. and was behind the creation these robots. Really feeling like Netflix needs to buy the rights to this story…
Unfortunately for my 4-year-old self, my mom continued to meander around the exhibits in an attempt cheer me up, but only ended up capturing my crying hysterics with an occasional look of terrified awe. I wanted so desperately to like them and look at them, but they were too much for me. For almost 6 years after that day, I had a recurring nightmare about being trapped in a theater with a T-rex, and it took me learning how to lucid dream in order to stop having that dream.
So, naturally, after the creation of such a traumatic core memory early on in my life, I decided that I wanted to recreate this failed birthday theme and host a dinosaur-themed birthday party for my 34th birthday. What could go wrong?
I wanted to right the wrong and create a fun and goofy dinosaur party. I sent out invites and requested that my friends come in their best dinosaur garb, and I went to work on finding decorations. I went a little crazy with the dino-themed goodies, racking up a bill of $75 from some online store in China with cheap yet plentiful options of inflatable dinosaur balloons and dinosaur keychains in every species I could find.
When the package from China arrived, half of the balloons had irreparable holes in them, making it impossible to inflate them. The rest of the balloons were about the quarter of the size than what had been advertised, and some of the keychains were just plain creepy. I started having mild flashbacks of the animatronic robots.
Because of the underwhelming decoration haul, I felt like I needed to take a trip to Party City to find some cupcake decorations or themed napkins or anything.
Quick question: have you been to a Party City recently?
One of my favorite parts of throwing a party as a kid was going to the party store and finding trinkets and silly straws and candies to stuff into goody bags and decorate the main party table with. Maybe even some fun candles or a piñata. But man, let me tell you, Party City is not the epic party destination it once was.
It was soul-crushingly depressing. Entire aisles were empty, triggering early pandemic day emotions when empty grocery store shelves were the norm. People were wandering around looking totally confused and retracing their steps to make sure that what they needed really wasn’t there. All of the dinosaur-themed things were sold out (or had never existed).
My husband made a joke about how we needed to immediately sell any stock we had in the company if we had any. A woman overheard us and tried to make some joke about not finding anything 1920s-themed that fell flat because of her obvious frustration in the lack of inventory.
Here’s what I equated the experience of going to Party City as an adult to: think about your favorite childhood clown that would show up to all of your friends’ birthday parties. He was probably named Bozo or Chuckles, and he had bright red hair and a colorful outfit with big shoes and lots of polka dots. He would have all kinds of funny tricks in his routine, make you giggle and slap your legs with amusement, and then make balloon animals for everyone at the end. He was the hero of the party.
Now imagine that you, as an adult, decide to hire the same clown for your kid’s birthday party in an attempt to relive the glory days. But this time Chuckles shows up in an unmarked white van, one of the windows covered over with duct tape and cardboard, and he’s smoking from a hole in his throat. His hair has pieces of drywall or dirt in it, and his eyes are glassy and red. Unable to stand for very long, he sits down in front of your confused kid, takes off his beat-up shoe, and asks the wide-eyed crowd of preschoolers, “You kids want to see a foot with three toes?”
I doused my hands in hand sanitizer after walking out of Party City with the pathetic haul of dinosaur cupcake toppers and solid-colored Solo cups and plates. (I’m so sorry to flame you Party City, but do better.) This was not exactly shaping up to be the exciting re-do I had in mind.
It was time to bring out my secret dinosaur weapon.
My husband, Derek.
Y’all, I’m married to a certified dinosaur nerd, and it’s the best thing ever. 🦖
When we got back home, I told him that I was disappointed with the lack of decorations, and he immediately headed upstairs to our guest room closet. There, he pulled out about two dozen dinosaur figurines in varying sizes and started to place them around the house. He even asked for permission to include Godzilla because “he’s not technically a dinosaur, but he’s still pretty cool.” He also went into our office/library and grabbed a couple of his dinosaur books for good measure. He did all of this with such positive gusto, I couldn’t help but smile.
His attempt to salvage the situation boosted my spirits tremendously, and I spent the entire day before the party making cupcakes and Rice Krispie treats and researching recipes for “Lava Punch.” I found a great dinosaur shirt to wear and got some cute dangly dinosaur earrings. We even picked up a cheap ladder ball set so that we could have some games to offer our guests. Things were starting to feel back on track.
The day of the party came, and I was overwhelmed with its success. Way more people showed up than I had predicted. The weather was absolutely perfect so we were able to all hang out safely on the back porch and in our big backyard. I had friends from every corner of my life show up, ages 14 to 60, all wearing some sort of dinosaur clothing or accessories. We read tarot cards and lit sparklers when it got dark. Everyone got along like they had known each other forever.
Perhaps my favorite part of the day, however, was watching Derek get to talk about all of his dinosaur toys. There were also people pitting the different Godzillas against each other, using the toys with claws that gripped to pick up keychains, and reading up on their childhood favorite dinos. His childhood dinosaur successes had made up for my childhood dinosaur failures.
I’d call that a total success.
Checking this one off the list felt like a real improvement of a childhood moment, not just a reenactment. I was able to capture some of the joy and playfulness that I used to feel as a kid at a birthday party without any of the horror of early 90s rubber dinosaur robots. I was surrounded by good friends who all got along and had a great time together. And the bestest best part?!
I got presents!
Not only were some of the presents dinosaur-themed, but a bunch of people got me items that will help me check off more things from the the list of 100 things that Big Kid Ellen is going to do this year 😍 Included in the pile of presents were an original Tamagotchi (#100), sidewalk chalk for hop-scotching (#65), a foursquare ball (#6), and two jump ropes for double-dutch jumping (#4). What a lucky duck I am to have friends that are so supportive of this project and that want to see me succeed in bringing joy back into my life.
Which brings me to my final thought for this post — if you, dear reader, want to do one of the things on the list with me, let me know! Or if you have your own little list going and check something off the list, let me know. I want to support as many big kids out there that I can.
