You Know How It Is ...

... you're at the fifth Christmas party of the season and it's only December third. You've met and greeted a whole passel of people that you see only once a year (or so) because in the main they are your husband's business associates. While consuming rice pilaf and chicken marsala with green beans almondine and a pumpernickel roll with butter, sipping sweet tea with a great big wedge of lemon and foregoing dessert, you enjoy catching up with the goings-on of the children of the folks with whom you share a table. You do your best to keep the conversation aloft by telling anecdotes and assorted cautionary tales and whatever else happens to cross your mind that is both appropriate to talk about and passably interesting. It's the social equivalent of a vanilla ice cream cone: pleasant enough but not exactly earth-shattering. Benign. Distinctly un-revelatory. Sweet, but prone to go a little soggy at the end. Okay! Just okay. Necessary but by no means evil. You get my drift.

In the car on the way to these things, after flinging half my wardrobe around the room trying to figure out what to wear that will serve the triple purpose of covering me up, making a sedately festive fashion statement, and not making me look as though I swallowed a whale, and after giving myself one last spritz of Magie Noire and checking my hair, despairing inwardly of it ever curling the way it's supposed to in back, I give myself a stern talking-to. It goes something like this: "Shut up. Just shut up! You always open your mouth at some point during these functions and, having done so, stick your foot in up to the ankle, but perhaps tonight if you listen a little more and talk a little less, you'll not only learn a new fact and/or concept but you'll come across as something other than a chatterbox that got turned upside down and stuck in that position, spilling an endless stream of words punctuated with laughter and big hand gestures and much eye-rolling, to the amazement and wonder of your table partners but of course NOT Greg, who has witnessed -- and now passively accepts -- this sickening display thousands of times over the last twenty-nine years ..." I trail off, looking out the window of the car into the darkness, knowing too well that the first person I see at the party -- unless they move away from me very quickly -- will likely receive the full benefit of my knowledge, opinions, viewpoints, recent victories, past regrets, heartfelt desires, New Year's resolutions, and overall cultural and socioeconomic paradigm. That's just the way the Christmas cookie crumbles.

This evening's soiree provided no noticeable disturbance in the pattern I've worked so hard to establish. The third person I saw was a lady I adore. I sat next to her last year and we yapped about Johnny Depp the whole time. Seems she's rather "into" the darling pirate just like I am, although not to the same alarming degree. Tonight, after we got caught up on what's been going on in our lives and the lives of our husbands and kids, she could not wait to ask me what I knew about Johnny's new movie that comes out in a few weeks. Of course she was rewarded for her fine and intuitive question by a lengthy dissertation on not only the movie itself, but the fact that as we spoke Johnny was in New York City for the global premiere of Sweeney Todd. What would he be wearing??? I couldn't wait to get home and see the new pictures, and I'm pretty sure she caught my enthusiasm. I think I had uttered 8,527 words, give or take, before the first cherry tomato entered my mouth during the salad course. It was that stern talking-to I gave myself in the car! Just think how I would have monopolized the conversation if I had not taken the "Just Shut Up!" chat to heart! I'm nothing if not a quick study.

After dinner it was time to do that aggravating gift exchange thing wherein everybody who brought a present got to approach the gift table, dither for an age about which box or bag to select, open it, show it around, and trundle the loot off to their seat. The next person whose number was called (the numbers having been distributed earlier) got to either pick a new gift or, in lieu of that thrilling prospect, take the one that had already been opened, until all customers had been served. Sort of a devil-you-know-beats-the-devil-you-don't setup. You could almost hear the second person thinking: "Do I take the battery-operated foot massager that Fred got, or pick a garishly-wrapped package that might contain something even less scintillating? Which begs the question, IS there anything less scintillating than Fred's battery-operated foot massager?" And so on, ad nauseam. I refuse to go to the gift table; we bring only one gift and I send my husband to do all the dirty work. Tonight we had the good fortune to be the first number called to pick a gift. Guess what it turned out to be? A Kitchen Gourmet Party Dipper! Yes ... a Party Dipper! Recipes included! Keeps your favorite dips hot! Great for parties! 0.65 qt. slow cooker! A miniature crock pot! A nifty appliance, you might say, but somehow not what I had hoped for.

So of course I brandished it every time a subsequent guest got up and walked toward the gift table. No need to open a new gift! You need a Party Dipper! Christmas is coming, with all those parties that will have stuff for dipping! But I got no takers and, in the end, I was stuck with it. I'm looking at it right now. It's kind of cute actually, and I can visualize using it to melt chocolate chips and heavy cream into a hot gooey sauce into which I might dip everything from strawberries to pound cake cubes. I'm "warming" to the idea. The only fly in the fondue is, on the way home as I clutched the Party Dipper to my bosom, I was gripped with the certainty that I had committed a social faux pas even more critical than talking too much! What if one of the other two couples at our table had brought the Party Dipper as their white elephant offering? And if so, did I offend them by waving it desperately at everyone who got up to select a gift? Paralyzed with the conviction that either couple one or couple two had in fact supplied the Party Dipper with which I had been so blatantly unsatisfied, I was practically speechless with shame all the way home. I doubt I spoke more than five thousand words in twelve miles.

You know how it is ...

Comments

[Julie]

I just love those parties! Not really, I got my bosses name this year, woo-hoo! Looking forward to this one. LOL! At least you had someone to talk with that you have something in common with. I remember you talking of her last year. And Johnny did look stunning last night.You were right on that account, LOL!

[Jennifer]

Good grief! He split the atom! Never ... ah, I say that every time, don't I? Suffice to say he looked mighty fine y'all ... LOL! All stops were pulled out, all bases covered and then some. Mighty fine.

[Deppfest]

I'd be amazed if Johnny's look didn't leave you speechless, Jen! I'm so glad to be out of the works party thing this year - I only have to fraternise with the people I love. Still get naff gifts, however - it seems to be a family tradition to buy toot!

[Jennifer]

I love the way you Brits talk ...