Pinata Season

Winter has arrived, although the promised "blizzard"? The reason I cancelled classes tonight for the first time in eight years? Was that dinky little snow-shower IT? I used to live in Big Cottonwod Canyon, so it takes a lot of snowstorm to impress me.

At any rate, I'm beginning to realize that it is almost time for the holidays and with them comes the dreaded pinata season.

I used to think that I struggled with pinatas because I was not sufficiently familiar with Mexican culture and therefore missing out on some sort of pinata etiquette. This misconception was partly fueled by Diego Rivera. How can something this beautiful possibly be evil? Well, for starters, Diego Rivera was not urged by the children in the painting to "Get a Batman one! No! Dora the Explorer!" Every year in which I can't think of something more wholesome to do at our Adult Education Christmas Party, I am the Pinata Czar... Uh, -ess. Naturally everyone brings their kids and Kate, idiot that she is, imagines a Rivera-like pinata activity. Let me tell you why it's not. Just in case you haven't yet been stupid enough to try this.

1. Rigging the thing. It weighs about 12 tons. After years of pretending that we had NO IDEA how that ceiling tile at the neighborhood church hall got destroyed, we finally figured out to remove a couple of tiles and rig the pinata to the structural stuff underneath. Now we have NO IDEA how the structural stuff got destroyed.

2. The pinata bat. I used to think that there was such a thing: the right tool for the job. One that couldn't permanently maim someone. Uh-uh. The possibility of being maimed is all part of the pinata experience. We use a mop handle. One of my many jobs is to try to keep the bystanders (especially the ones holding the babies up for a better look) BACK! BACK! WOULD EVERYONE PLEASE STAND BACK! No, they won't. The kid who has a turn, particularly if s/he actually makes contact with the pinata, will start whacking like some sort of crazed axe murderer. It's supposed to be my job to disarm this windmill of death after a few whacks. I do this by going in low: I crouch, then SPRING, expertly tackling the child.

3. Turn taking. Forget about it. No matter how formidable I am, the kids will clamber, nag, tug, elbow each other in the face, whatever it takes to have the next turn. Any child under seven who thinks s/he is going to get a look in will only have a chance if they have an older sibling to be the fixer.

4. But the finale is the worst. You would think these kids had never seen a Tootsie Roll in their lives. Monkey piles four children high, over a mini Snickers? The best year was the one when the rope was still attached to the pinata while it was on the floor being savaged by the roiling masses. Mark, faithful rope-man, was trying to intervene in the melee, which he did by walking into the fray and lifting out children one at a time, with the end of the pinata rope still held absently in his hand. What he didn't realize was that one of the kids had the rope wrapped around his neck. So every time Mark waded into the pile, he was pulling the rope tight and strangling the kid. Who totally deserved to be strangled. Finally he figured out why the kid was being yanked into the air by his neck every time he approached, and let go of the rope. Profuse apologies to the parents followed for the ligature marks on their son's neck, to which they simply replied with a shrug, "Ah, that's pinatas for you."