I, like many others I’m sure, have been tuning into twitter every night for a book written entirely in tweet form.
This book, Black Box is written by Jennifer Egan (the author of A Visit from the Goon Squad) and it is being tweeted out by the New Yorker,@NYerFiction.
I love the idea of a book by tweet. The idea is so new and original that I thought I could only do one thing to honor it, copy the idea myself. So below you will find yesterday’s play date tweeted out as I would’ve tweeted it out had I not been afraid to get my kindle wet or covered in pizza sauce or glitter glue. Ahem, I mean because I was very busy watching the littles-obviously.*Each little section is 140 characters or less…..I know this because I may have checked it via twitter first.
If your house is clean by the time of your scheduled playdate, your company will be late.
If your house is still a mess and you are running around frantically your company will be early.
This is the way of the universe and make peace with it you must. (Yes,you should say that mantra in a Yoda voice and say it often.)
Your children will check the digital clock in the kitchen, look out the window and ask”When will they be here?” in a seemingly endless loop.
Your company will arrive very late but bearing pizza and all will be forgiven.
You will realize that your prior plan of making grilled cheese sandwiches shaped like puppy dogs for five children was hilarious.
If your guests arrive wearing swimwear,hindsight will tell you that your time could have been spent putting swimwear on your children too.
You will ask your hindsight to mind it’s own business and watch your guests while you go do that now.
Now that everyone is dressed in swimsuits they will decide they want to eat pizza first.
Once pizza is eaten and the children start looking out the window, they’re probably ready to play with the water ballons you promised them.
Calm the fear in your heart it will be fine.
At some point your child will discover that their ability to launch water at their playmate is easier with the water balloon left untied.
This is good because your hindsight is probably surprised you didn’t have a water balloons ready for the play date beforehand.
As official water balloon re-filler you can be expecting to stay in a bent over position by the tap for the next hour.
Should the area around the tap become a muddy mess you can declare it a no wetting zone for safety’s sake.
This is partly true but also by this time getting soaked by open water balloon while hunched over will start to get a little tiring.
Do not let show this or the no wetting zone will become moot-carry on as though having your pant leg soaked is the funnest thing ever.
The next forty minutes will be spent getting everyone dressed and re-dressed and doing something with all of the wet clothes and shoes.
If your hindsight can be coaxed back out of his office apologize for yelling at him earlier and you can get dry again yourself.
A word on craft projects, if you don’t have one set up everyone will be expecting one.
If you set one up no one will be interested in doing it. Set one up anyway.
It will all turn out fine in the end and as your guests leave your child will turn to you and say that it was the best play date ever.
She always says this same thing after every play date but it will flood you with happy just the same.
If you’d like to take a look at Jenifer Egan’s book tweets You cane see them here. If you’ve missed the installments so far you can read a recap of all of the tweets here. 
