Our neighbors who live two houses down invited us to a Kentucky Derby/Cinco de Mayo party yesterday— mint juleps and nachos. It was an afternoon-sliding-into-evening, kids-plus-adults affair. There must have been 20 small boys between the ages of 2 and 10 there, and our guys had a blast. The adults mostly hung out on the back patio while the throng of boys ran from the front yard through the house and out the side door, brandishing croquet mallets. As long as no one was crying, we were happy to leave them to their own devices, and consequently throughout the afternoon we went ten and twenty minutes at a time without seeing them.

At one point Husband walked into the alley to have a cigarette, and he spotted Aitch coming out the back door of our house. “What are you doing in there?” he asked, thinking perhaps I had walked Aitch over for some reason.

“We’re having a party at my house!” Aitch said with pride. Husband and he went into the house just in time to see ten or so little Lords of the Flies exiting through the front door.

Apparently, Aitch had lured them over en masse and they spent a happy unsupervised half-hour playing cars and eating tortilla chips they had brought from the real party. There was a trail of chip crumbs across the floor. Also (I am not making this up), one of the five-year-olds had thrown up in the bathroom.

Husband summed up the situation in a word: “Harbinger,” he said.