At 3:45 Sunday afternoon they met at Geiger Park in Ewa and got ready by taping posters and banners to the car doors.

At just before 4 p.m. the party started rolling, crossing Kapolei Parkway into Sun Terra South.

At the cul-de-sac on the end of Kahiuka Street, Noah Weida rode his bike. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but he could tell something was up.

Noah, a second grader at Iroquois Point Elementary School, rode in swooping circles while his parents, Tanya and Jerrod, and his little sister, Sadie, tried not to give away the surprise. Noah was excited, though. Very excited.

Then, at exactly 4 p.m., the line of cars started heading down Kahiuka Street, horns honking, radios playing, kids singing, parents cheering. Noah stopped his wild pedaling, jumped off his bike and took his place next to his family on the sidewalk.

It was Noah’s birthday, and his mother and aunt had organized a drive-by surprise party for him. They invited his classmates, current teachers, last year’s teacher, his wrestling coach and the lady who used to babysit him when he was little.

The party guests formed a parade of about 20 cars, though it was hard to keep count because several of the cars looped back and made more than one pass around the cul-de-sac. Noah’s smile was as bright as the Ewa sun.

This is how a boy turns 8 in the time of a pandemic. This is how a mom makes the very best of the circumstances she is given.

“He is quite a social butterfly, and he has been saying, ‘I miss my friends so much,’” mom Tanya Weida said. Noah has online classes three times a week and distance enrichment programs, but he has been keeping track of daily COVID-19 updates in the news, hoping the numbers continue to go down so he can go back to school.

Eight is an age when children start to take steps away from the magical thinking of their little-kid years and begin to wonder about, even worry about, the real world outside their homes. This is probably even truer for kids living through this lockdown and thinking through all the changes in their lives.

The party, though, was magic.

Noah basked in the fun of it all. One family drove by and showered candies on him like a parade float tossing favors to the crowd. A minivan pulled up, the side door slid open and all the kids inside belted out a round of “Happy Birthday.” Some friends shot Silly String in his direction. Some rolled past and threw gifts at his feet, though Tanya had made it clear that no one had to bring presents. Another family held out a tray of cupcakes, careful not to touch hands. Noah’s kumu blew a conch shell.

When the little party was over and all the cars full of friends had driven away, Noah ran around making sure he had picked up all the candies from the ground. He insisted that he had suspected nothing and that it was a total surprise, and as he gathered up his cupcakes and headed home for a dinner of steak that his dad would cook on the grill, his face was beaming like this was just possibly the best drive-by birthday party a boy could want.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.