2005年NPR美国国家公共电台九月-Teaching Kids How to Party -- on the Chea

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Commentator¹ Aaron Freeman's twin daughters are getting ready for the ninth grade, but long before they were preparing for high school, he taught them a lesson about their bud Mitzvahs . Ours is an upper middle class community with a healthy percentage of Jews, many of whom are tragically² overcompensated. In Highland³ Park, spending less than 100,000 dollars on a party for a 13-year-old is considered "frugal⁴". My daughters went to a party this year, that not only included a caravan⁵ of straight SUVs taking the kids to a Chicago Ball Room to eat crab⁶. But once there, each kid in between dances led by professional booty-shakers, each kid got her picture-taken with a man who my daughters continue to swear was the real Brad Pitt. No matter what we did, our daughters' party would not compete, so we decided⁷ to go "low rent and high spirit".

"No", said mom and dad to a ballroom⁸ or a banquet hall, not even the local country club, "we can decorate our nice big yard" said mom, "and have a bunch of fun doing it" added dad.

"A tent?" No, "DJ? " No, "Ok, but where are we gonna put the dance floor?"
No dance floor, you know, when the Hebrews cross the Red Sea, they dance " Alright, alright, alright" whined⁹ my daughters. The Biblical stuff always gets them.

The month leading up to their Bud Mitzvahs zigzagged¹⁰ between studying the Bible passage they will recite, and arguing about the party they would have. On the big day, my daughters read their portions flawlessly and the party, well let's just say they didn't miss the DJ. A musician friend loaned us a sound system which my kids plugged into their computers and played songs they downloaded on I-Tunes.So they loved all the music. Instead of catering¹¹, I, my mother, my buddy¹² Steve and James, grilled¹³ yams and pineapples and fish and everybody danced and ate and got down like it was 2099. Near the party's end, my younger daughter sweaty from dancing and bloated with punch even apologized for all the grief she had given us. And, to top it off, the next day, the mother of a girl who had been at our party called to say, she, a parent,had used our party as ammunition¹⁴ against her daughter's demand for three pro-dancers. Now, we are by no means the only folks in town who reject insane bar bud Mitzvahs expenditures¹⁵ but we are immensely proud to be among them. And we bragged¹⁶ to have underspent them all and still had a blasted. The lesson is ,of course, that any mope with money can keep up with the Joneses, but it takes a wealth of family and friends to get down with the Freemans. Aaron Freeman , writer, performer and native son of Chicago.