I don’t think there was anything more frightening than seeing Marianna Triovino running towards me, dressed in my dad’s torn boxer shorts and mom’s old nursing bra...

It’s 5:30 in the morning and I’m surrounded by over fifty pink balloons. My lungs ache, my head pounds and the only question that comes to mind is, “Why the hell didn’t I just go with a Princess Pony Party?”

It’s the morning of my daughter’s fifth birthday party and the tension is thicker than the Scooby Doo ice cream cake in our freezer. Were my parents this stressed out when I turned five? Have the stakes always seemed this high?

We never had great parties when I was a kid and by great I meaned planned like the U.S. Marines attack on Baghdad. Growing up in Boston, there were no ice cream cakes, helium balloons or color-themed streamers at any of the parties I went to - including my own. Birthday parties were planned only to the extent that we knew where the party was going to be (our backyard), who it was for and that it would last until my dad got fed up with twenty kids acting like morons in his backyard and told them all to go home.

My family was so poor my mom would make up birthday games like "Hobo Relay Race" where each team would have to dress up using a trash bag of my parent’s old clothes and race across the yard. I don’t think there was anything more frightening than seeing Marianna Triovino running towards me, dressed in my dad’s torn boxer shorts and mom’s old nursing bra.

One of the greatest events ever was when Jimmy Houlihan got lost and we spent the next three and a half hours running all over the neighborhood looking for him while my mother convinced his mom it was just a "Birthday Friend" Scavenger Hunt.

But that was then and this is Beverly Hills where I, as a concerned and guilt-ridden parent - have been adamantly counselled our friends with children that my child's party must have structure, ice cream cake and most of all a theme to avoid scarring my child and ruining her childhood.

It seems that no proper child’s party in the 90210 area code is complete without a unifying theme: the Giraffe and Staff Animal Party fest, the magical world of Rani Hufner, the Dinosaur Pre-Historic Puppet Show, Todd’s Tropical Petting Zoo and the Healing Oasis Princess Spa Party where the receptionist promises, “Your child will be treated to a royal mini-massage, mini-manicure and pedicure, light make-up application, hairstyling and ‘date’ with Raul” (their thirty-two year-old resident escort).

Eventually my wife and I decide to have, what we began to lovingly refer to as the “In-the-Park Scooby” party, complete with purple and pink streamers, balloons and Scooby Doo ice–cream cake. The pink streamers clash with the whole Scooby theme but it’s my daughter’s favorite color so we make do. Regardless, I would have killed for a party like this when I was six but yet somehow, deep inside, I worry if it will be enough. I mean, this is Beverly Hills where children can be ostracized if there cell phone plan isn’t up-to-date.

Suddenly my wife calls out, “Where are the freaking gift bags?!” as I am blowing up balloon number fifty-seven.

In LA, the gift bag is the last minute jumper at the buzzer that can either make you or break you. A good gift bag that brings smiles to your children’s face and leaves all their greedy little friends happy can send you running off the court – arms outstretched – victorious. But one child’s whining complaint over a lame bag quickly announces to all your children’s friends, “My Dad is Joe Mudd, second-best and a pretender to the throne.”

Knowing that I forgot them, I automatically scream back, “I thought you got them!” At this point, my voice is hoarse from blowing up balloon number thirty-nine. My face red – not from anger but from oxygen deprivation and the only thing I was sure of as I wiped the spittle from my lips was that we were in trouble. Without quality gift bags, this party is not a party. Taking my daughter and six of her closest friends to the park without gift bags would be nothing more than a large play date.

I don’t know when the Gift Bag became the staple of any successful children’s party but I do think it paralleled the same rise of stature in the Academy Awards and other awards show gift bags. It seems no Academy Awards, People’s Choice or Emmys are complete without lengthy mention of what the honored presenters will receive for their thirty seconds of work onstage.

In Beverly Hills, most gift bags could finance a small third world country or at least one large family from New Orleans. First, you have your candy – and not just any candy – but sugar-free, organically sweetened gourmet candy that has been specially picked and hand-wrapped by Tibetan Monks. Along with the candy is a whole variety of prizes, souvenirs and special party favors - special enough that each and every little child will swoon with delight but not special enough that they’ll fight over who got the red plastic harmonica and who got the furry toy animal. Special but homogenous - unique but generic – it’s kind of like the prime-time Fall TV lineup.

At eight o’clock on a Saturday morning, the shopping choices are extremely limited so after a failed attempt to find Scooby Doo paraphernalia at a Sav-On Drug Store, I make a mad dash to 7-11 where I nearly accost the foreign man behind the counter.

“Do you have any Scooby candy or toys or bracelets – anything Scooby?!”

It is only by the wincing look he gives me that I realize I’m shouting at him and waving my arms like a character on LOST who has just seen a passing boat. I spend close to eighty-seven dollars on assorted Scooby candy necklaces, gum, colored-sugar powder toys, and ice. I grab a stack of those wax paper doughnut bags to use as gift bags and my only worry is what I might do if some small child at the party is foolish enough to complain about it in front of me.

Then it was off to the park to hang up the balloons, streamers and Pinata. After that I put my marriage in extreme jeopardy as I scream at my wife’s approach to laying down the napkins. “No, no,” I shout, “It’s purple, pink, purple pink, then Scooby Doo, purple pink purple pink then Scooby Doo! I told you this!!”

Forty-five stress-filled minutes later, the decorations are set, the food is laid out, and the cake is ready for candles. We have enough food and games to keep a small battalion of Marines busy.

One by one, the girls show up – fashionably late, of course – I, of course, am close to a brain aneurysm as I pace back and forth until each and every one of the girls show up.

“Who’s ready to play some games?!” I call out desperately trying to hide my fear over the possibility that of any of these future debutantes might for one second be bored. But before I can open up TWISTER, the girls start running around a tree while giggling happily. The “Tree” game goes on for about twenty minutes, followed by tag and then onto the playground where they climb, run and screamed at the top of their lungs about nothing.

An hour or so later, it’s time for our Scooby ice cream cake, then back over to the swings, one more game of “House” and finally back for the opening of my daughter’s gifts.

About a half-second before I morph into my father circa 1975 and start yelling at the kids to go home, parents start to show up, the 7-11 doughnut “Gift” bags are passed out - no one offers up any complaints (thank God) - and everyone goes home happy – especially my daughter.

All in all, the party is a success, just like when I was a kid….except of course for the fact that no one had to wear my mother’s bloomers.

On the way home, the sugar buzz wears off, my daughter nods off faster than a Heroin Junkie and my wife and I promise ourselves that the next year we will make it easier for ourselves and spring for the Magical world of Rafni Hufner as we have learned making magic is not for the faint of heart in Beverly Hills.