Sunday, July 15, 2007

We followed up our Thursday night visit to a French restaurant with a Saturday afternoon visit to our friends' annual Bastille Day Bastille Day party. (Incidentally, I knew I had found the right Bastille Day reference link for this blog entry when I saw that the first sentence in the Wikipedia entry was "For the Battlestar Galactica episode, see Bastille Day (Battlestar Galactica." Ahh, the Internet is truly my home.) So, we bought some cheese, and headed over.

We don't see these friends very often, and I figured that I wouldn't know very many people at the party, so I decided to come equipped with some preprepared small talk. The party host was a Giants fan, and the Giants were playing that afternoon, so I was ready to bust out this bit of almost humorous banter:

Party Version of Me: Even the Giants are getting into the French spirit on Bastille Day!
Hypothetical Straight Man: How so?
Party Version of Me: They're losing.

I followed the party host around for a few minutes, tripping over myself to spit out the one thing that I had to say, but the opportunity never really presented itself. He was busy doing party stuff and my conversational fu is weak. After a few futile minutes, I latched back onto Hank in the kitchen and we struck up a conversation with another guest, who just happened to be the most boring person I had ever met.

This guy launched into an expansive tour of the regulatory situation of the financial niche company he worked for. My attempts to interject levity into the conversation bounced harmlessly off his tedium-based defense systems. Meanwhile, Hank excused herself to check on a dish she was heating in the oven, leaving me to suffer the full brunt of this guy's monotone attack. My mind wandered, trying to find a graceful exit out of this situation. This process took long enough that I just started to not care. I extricated myself by turning away from him and announcing, "Yes! I can help with that, Hank!"

And I marched over to Hank who required no assistance in removing her baked brie from the oven.

The next person we chatted with soon launched into her own pet peeve diatribe. She prattled on describing someone she clearly thought was insane, but with each passing complaint, it became more and more clear who the insane person was. Sadly, it was not the subject of her story, but rather the narrator. I just nodded demurely and ate more cheese. It seemed like the French thing to do.

So, uh, happy freaking Bastille Day everyone.

2 comments:

Sue said...

Aren't parties great? Especially when you know almost no one. I just love'em! Mmmmmm...one of my fondest party moments: at my hubby's work holiday party, music so loud you have to scream, I don't know anyone AT ALL, I don't speak or understand tech talk, I can't seem to drink enough to actually get drunk, the company's lawyer's husband has me cornered rambling about who knows what.... Yessss.... can't wait till next party.

P.S. Missed your blog!

Mike said...

Sue, oh, that sounds like me. Basically at events like this, I just chase my wife around. Meanwhile, she's eager to chat with humans who aren't me. It's a constant battle.