Monday
December 10, 2001
Social Disease
"Where did you FIND him?" asks Jean The Business Development Manager ... casting an admiring [and vaguely lascivious] eye at David from across the buffet table.
In his spiffy black suit and his bazillion-dollar smile, he is easily the 
hunkiest husband at The Dirt Company Holiday Party. And the most attentive: for most of the evening he has rarely left my side. Now he is standing next to me, carefully spooning mushroom gravy over the mound of rice on my plate. ["Is that enough? Or would you like another dollop?"]
"I found him in an AOL chat room," I beam at Jean in reply. The expression on her face turns out to be the third-best moment of The Dirt Company Christmas Party. [The second and first-best moments, respectively, are arriving at the party ... and finally departing the party, four and a half hours later.]
I've always been adept at finding ways to wiggle out of social obligations ... especially those social occasions where I am 1.) required to smile, make eye contact, chuckle warmly and engage in polite chit-chat with people I might otherwise cross the street to avoid, or social occasions where I am 2.) required to show up. When I had Tots in diapers, "babysitter complications" was always a reliable *out.* No one ever questions "babysitter complications" ... mainly because no one wants you to bring your baby to a white-tablecloth-and-place-cards dinner party. As The Tots got older, "sick kid" became the excuse of choice. [And once again it worked every time, mainly because no one wants you to bring your sneezing/runny-nosed/diarrheic four year old to a 50th Wedding Anniversary party.] Other excuses I've used over the years -- with varying degrees of credibility -- include dead grandparent ... dead battery ... sudden unfortunate temporary paralysis ... moving to California.
And then of course there's always the tried-and-true "family obligation" ... which is what I used to get out of last year's Totem Pole Company Holiday Party.
There was no wiggling out of this year's company Christmas party, of course. I didn't even try. And yes, it was OK, as far as office parties go ... especially as HOLIDAY office parties go. The food was great, the General Manager's home was lovely, I won a $20 gift certificate to a fancy-pants Vietnamese Restaurant in the gift exchange, I had a beautiful new black velvet pantsuit to dribble peanut sauce on ... and yes, I'm glad I went: I felt it was important that I be perceived as A Team Player, by my boss and by her boss and by the owner of the company and by all of my [slightly-inebriated] new co-workers ... even if I secretly would have preferred to spend my Saturday night at home in bed with my husband, watching "Cops" and cleaning my toenails with a bent pair of tweezers.
What can I tell you? A party grrl I will never be. I doubt that that will ever change.
On the other hand, if I must suffer from the social disease known as PartyPooperitis -- and if I must endure the occasional Enforced Happy-Doodle Fun Time -- it helps to have somebody like David at my side. He is the Groucho to my Harpo ... the John Gilbert to my Greta Garbo ... the Teller to my Penn. [Or is it the Penn to my Teller?] As quiet and uncomfortable as I am in a roomful of people, that's how engaging and electric and comfortable he is. He spent the entire evening shmoozing, glad-handing, charming the socks off my new co-workers -- at one point I caught him engaging in Death Penalty Chat with the Marketing Manager's wife -- and proving beyond a molecule of a doubt my theory that if you put Ю僱êrvØ¡ into a room full of people, he will find something to talk about with each and every one of them before the night is over. [He even managed to find somebody he'd gone to high school with, if you can believe that -- the caterer's husband -- and they spent about an hour exchanging Do you remember so-and-so stories.] With David by my side I felt safe and relaxed. He kept conversation flowing. He kept an arm around my waist/a hand on my knee at all times. He helped deflect the inevitable "Have you tried the Merlot/the Cabarnet Sauvignon/the Ultra-Snooty Napa Valley?" ["We don't drink wine, actually ... but the stuffed mushrooms are great."] He made a potentially intolerable evening tolerable.
Plus he's probably got Jean The Business Development Manager scrambling madly for the nearest AOL chat room, right about now.
