How to traumatize small children with a piñata

I went to my niece's 6th birthday party on Saturday. My brother and his wife are big fans of the party piñata, and it's a fun tradition. Little kids heaving a stick (ever-so-lightly) against bamboo shelled papier mache candy-holding goodness. Julia's party had a puppy theme this year, so they ended up w/ a Blue's Clues piñata or something vaguely resembling that.

I was talking to one of the guests' moms as my brother was stringing up ol' Blue. She was Irish--not sure how many years in this country--but fresh enough to still have a fresh viewpoint. We were talking about the more disturbing aspects of the piñata tradition. For her, small children pounding away at a star or something like that was no biggie; small children pounding away at a favorite cartoon character, screaming "Kill it, kill it!" on the other hand...okay, yeah, maybe a little twisted. Of course, she had a sense of humor about it, just also the slightest, um, discomfort.

So we'd only just begun to psychoanalyze and deconstruct the finer points of the white hegemony co-opting Mexican tradition and the history of southern aggression (i.e. I was about to say: "Well, we stole it from Mexico, so I guess you have to blame them, but, um, that sounds bad, er-uh...)

Luckily, I didn't have a chance to open my mouth, so everything went just fine. The pinata was strung and ready to go, the kids were gathered and herded outside into a line, little kids first, bigger kids last. Everyone under the age of 9 or so gets to take a whack.

Ol' Blue proved a worthy adversary. Whoever built him made him well. Finally, after much swinging and cries of "Stop! Little toddler Susie's wandered up right behind you!" and all the assorted drama that go with piñata-destroying, a 7-year-old got a solid enough hit in to just bust the gut. I few pieces of candy dropped. One or two more thwacks and Blue was good to go. My brother did that thing that piñata-wranglers do and began to yank the rope to shake out the candy--a gesture usually followed by showers of sweetness, greedy scrambling and squeals of delight.

But this day, it was not to be.

Whoever made Blue's body did a great job. Whoever made his neck...eh, little bit of a slacker. After just a shake or two, Blue's head popped off his body and shot up as the body descended, finally tangling in the rope about 4 feet above the body and lolling there helplessly.

In fairness, this didn't actually traumatize anyone. Mostly people were just trying not to pee themselves from laughter. My brother in-law, in-law (my sister-in-law's brother) did threaten to send my brother the therapy bills for his son. I was happy to see the Irish woman also doubled over with tears coming out of her eyes (in a good way).

And all was captured on camera. Ah, it's good to have some home movies that you can really look forward to.