Just not a party sort of girl...

...when it comes to birthdays, I mean.

For toddlers. Or preschoolers.

Think about it -- when you were 2, 3 or 4, did your mom and dad attend birthday parties with you? Did they sit around making forced conversation with a bunch of equally uncomfortable parents? Did they participate in all the games and festivities?

Mine didn't. BECAUSE BACK THEN WE DIDN'T HAVE BASHES FOR TOTS INVOLVING FREAKING GYMBOREE OR JUMP ZONES OR FIRE TRUCKS OR OTHER EQUALLY HIDEOUS FORMS OF ENTERTAINMENT THAT MAKE ONE THINK OF JABBING STRAIGHT PINS UNDER ONE'S FINGERNAILS.

Back then, the parties started around kindergarten or first grade and your mom dropped you off at someone's house -- or maybe the roller rink -- and then picked you up a couple hours later. (Or maybe the next morning, after you sat up giggling all night with your girlfriends.)

If your mom did stick around, it was because the birthday girl was the daughter of her best friend and they mixed up a couple of gin and tonics and smoked their ciggies nonchalantly while their offspring, armed with sharp implements, lurched toward a poster of a donkey.

God, please spare me any further celebrations for little people who can't even tell you how freaking old they are.

Please spare me the expectation that parents also must attend these blasted, overblown events.

In the blessed days of old, a birthday party meant a free afternoon while the host/hostess assumed responsibility for the party-goers.

So --

If you can afford to rent out a football stadium for your 3-year-old, then you can damn well afford to hire a couple of extra nannies to manage the little darlings, thereby exempting the parents from the torture of sticking around and making awkward conversation with one another as they try to ignore the screams of the toddlers terrified by the fire truck's obnoxious blaring horn.

Hey, when your kid turns 5, call me. I'll drop mine off at your place and go browse through a bookstore during the festivities.

But please, I beg you, do not ask me to dig out yet another pair of non-holey socks so that I can romp through an inflatable wonderland with the birthday boy and a dozen or so other toddlers who are accompanied their own shoeless parents.