Rugrats: The Unintentional Party Crasher

[Asharah]

 I used to live across the street from some people who had a son my middle daughter's age. They were never really good friends, but when they were younger they played together a little.

When I gave my children a birthday party I usually invited the neighbors as well as their friends from school, but the year my daughter turned thirteen, she said she would prefer to just have some school friends and two or three of her friends on the block.

Not wanting to hurt my neighbors feelings, I never mentioned the party to her...but the day of the party I was over at my other neighbors picking up some coupons for the pizza they were going to have, and she happened to stop by.

She says...."Oh, you are getting pizza tonight?" and I said yes. I didn’t want to tell her about the party....but she probably already knew about it....because she kept persisting...."Oh..just you and L are going to have a pizza all to yourselves?" Not wanting to out and out lie to her, I said, "Well actually, its her birthday and she is having a couple of friends over for pizza".

My neighbor said, "That’s nice" and that was the end of it.
Later on that evening, during the party, I come downstairs, and who is standing there, in my house, eating a piece of pizza and drinking a soda, but her son....the one who wasn’t invited!

My daughter comes down behind me, and sees him....and she said...."What are YOU doing here?" He said that his mother sent him over.

I didn’t want her to hurt his feelings so....I shushed my daughter, and I tried to make him feel welcome......he was just a kid, after all......but I was pretty offended. I mean, he just walked right in and crashed my daughters party!
The worst thing.....he didn’t even bring my daughter a gift and he ate twice as much as the other kids! Kids0527-03

1.  Teenaged boys eat three times more than elephants so he's not unusual.

2.  The poor kid was simply doing what his mother told him to do and landed right in the middle of a major faux pas that was not entirely of his own making.  I hope you took the opportunity to instruct your daughter in how to act gracious in similar future circumstances.

Asharah's comment: I hope OP had a little talk with neighbor mom the next day. Were there other boys there or was it an all-girl event? Can you imagine if it was a slumber party he crashed?

[Twik]

OK, people really, *really** need to start locking their doors, so that pushy neighbours don't just waltz right in.

In any case, the writer should have shown her daughter how to behave by saying, "PushyNeighbourSon, I'm afraid we've got some people coming over right now, so you'll have to run home."

[Emmy]

I feel bad for the son, with a mother like that he will always be clueless about etiquette.  I don't think it is fair to blame the son him coming over when he was instructed to do so (and probably told he was invited) by his mother and for not having a gift.  It is odd that he was in the OP's house eating pizza so it seemed like instead of knocking he just walked right in.  The mother fishing for an invite is bad enough, but when the OP didn't take the bait, sending her kid over anyway as unbelievably nervy.  I wonder if he felt uncomfortable at the party not being friends with the OP's DD.

I had a friend who I met when he was in his late 20's.  I didn't know him or his family growing up, but he was completely clueless about etiquette when I met him.  He thought it was OK to invite people to somebody's house (even if the homeowner didn't know the person), didn't understand why it wasn't OK just to bring extra uninvited guests to a wedding, and asked personal questions including how much money a person makes, how much their house costs, whether a couple has 'done stuff' yet, ect.  Our group of friends had the comfort level to tell him he was being inappropriate at times and he eventually met and married a woman who keeps him on track (mostly).  The surprising thing was my friend claimed never to know saying and doing certain things were inappropriate - things that would be obviously rude to most people.  I know that being 'etiquette challenged' as caused him problems socially and with one of his jobs over the years.  I don't know whether my friend's mother taught him etiquette or not, but it sounds like the boy in the OP is headed for difficult times socially with his mother as a role model.