My younger Large Smelly Boy plans birthday parties with the frightening precision of an engineer. Felix Unger? Meet Martha Stewart.

He begins months in advance, poring over magazines and listing all the activities he wants to do and all the recipes he wants to make. He redoes his lists. He designs his invitations. He insists it won’t rain and that he will be the one to splay open the pita. What he doesn’t do on a spreadsheet he makes up for with a timeline.

So it went that on a recent day when my calendar was crammed to the gills I found myself in Craft Store Hell tracking down adorable sparkly gold drawstring bags that he insisted meant everything to his idea of Party Perfection.

Before that, it was Household Goods Box Store Hell and a phone conversation that went something like this:

Me: They have piñatas, which means we don’t have to make one from papier mache, right? Do you want one?

Him: (Evasive mumble mumble.)

Me: They have a pirate, a fish, a parrot, a mermaid and … let’s see … a penguin. Which one do you want?

Him: (Evasive mumble mumble.)

Me: Do you want a piñata?

Me: This is your chance to get a piñata.

Me: You realize I’m not going to have time to do the papier mache, right?

Me: Do you want a penguin?

Me: I’m going to have to leave now.

Him: Wait! What do they have again?

Me: A pirate, a fish, a parrot, a mermaid and a penguin.

Him: What?

Me: A pirate, a fish, a parrot, a mermaid and a penguin.

I loaded a penguin in the back end of the Large Smelly Boymobile.

***

We bought three large bags of candy for the piñata and for Halloween night. I casually say bought, for picking out just the right packages required a frenzied fit of worry. I’m still sort of amazed we didn’t spend the night surrounded by Snickers Bars and Butterfingers.

Who knew small packages of Reese’s Pieces don’t come in individual bags? They can only be bought in a mixture of candy. We discovered this only after looking over Every. Single. Box. Of. Candy. In. The. Aisle. Candy mixtures that include distasteful candies apparently do not equal Party Perfection. This is a problem. This requires looking through all the mixture bags to find one with the most Reese’s Pieces and the fewest distasteful candies.

A few days before the party I came home and the penguin was sitting on the dining table and the large bags were nearly empty of candy. The LSB had pawed through the bags, picked out his favorite pieces and stuffed them all in the piñata. Only the Twizzlers and Milk Duds were left.

This had been a giant mound of candy I had envisioned would be doled out among many dozen trick-or-treaters who could rampage at will through the neighborhood stoked up on high-fructose corn syrup.

Instead, now most of it was in the butt of a penguin that would be whacked open, and it would be divvied up among six Large Smelly Tweenagers who would be confined to my living room for several hours.

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