In recent years I don’t much like to go out in the evenings, even locally, but sometimes I feel that I have to show up at friends’ dinner parties or they’ll think I’m mad at them or something. I can have a good time when I go out, but for me, as for a lot of people, the looser the better. I honestly think this attitude of “leave me alone” started unconsciously with my resentment at “single file, no talking” in grammar school.
I particularly don’t like sit-down dinners or place cards or all those rules, which, of course, offends the people who do like them. Some hostesses at sit-downs want you to sit there for a pretty long stretch after all the courses. It seems to me men have a tougher time doing that than women. As I walk around, I sometimes peek into the dining room and see the men who are too afraid to get up sitting there in what to me looks like pain.
The only kinds of dinner party rules I like are come when you want, or don’t. That’s okay, too. Walk around when you want, leave when you want. That’s my “do unto others.” Y’know the classic novel Great Expectations? I have no expectations. It’s more relaxing. I’m not saying I’m right about this, but I bet there are millions of people who feel as I do. The really tough sit-down place-card deal is when at some point the hostess or host asks everyone to respond to a question. A recent one was “How did you meet your spouse?” No big deal, right? It was for me. I can’t really tell you why. I just know that as the people around the table dutifully told their spouse meeting stories I was silent, then tense, then I started making jokes.
Stuff like “I don’t for a minute believe that’s how you met him.”
Graciously, I hope, I managed to leave the table before my turn came. I have a pretty good spouse meeting story, too, which I’m going to tell you. I just didn’t feel like sharing it with a group of people, some of whom I barely knew. I can write about it, but that feels different.
Generally, I choose to share that only with close friends who probably already know how I met my spouse.
I think what I just said is fairly defensible, but my behavior at one dinner party wasn’t.
Even though I have a tendency, like most of us, to be on my side, in this one even I can see I was out of line. The host asked everyone their thoughts on the election. It wasn’t take your turn as we go around the table and it wasn’t obligatory, although a few times the host looked at me and said, “Chuck?”
I asked the host if I could use his treadmill, then got up and left the room. I actually thought about using the treadmill but chose to just sit in the living room, where the hostess soon joined me. She didn’t want to discuss the election, either.
I know this, though. As bad as I am with all of the above, if anyone ever starts a game of charades, the sound of tires screeching into the night means Charles has left the building.