Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend, Friday, March 11th, 2011
Do you know what really gets on my nerves? No, not home parties in which people try to pawn products off onto their embarrassed friends who attended only so that they could
A) Socialize with friends
B) Munch on goodies that were sequestered from the host family’s appetite
C) Escape from their own domestic duties
D) All of the above
Rarely is the purpose of attending such a party to buy unnecessary things at exorbitant prices, all the while looking casual and carefree while wondering behind your smile how to tell your spouse that it wasn’t good enough to get away the whole evening; you also squandered next week’s grocery money.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how these home parties spread among friends, like bread mold or some viral or bacterial infection, rippling from an inner circle out to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances? This is where the term “hosting” a party conjures not hospitality, but a biological organism who unwittingly serves as a medium for pathogens to thrive on.
There are home parties for cookware, Tupperware, silver, jewelry, make-up, decorative things, and women’s undergarments in which you are guaranteed to be fitted so that your cup neither runneth over nor saggeth under. Of course, I know there exist other, racier home parties, but I haven’t been invited to any of those. Thank God. Let’s keep it that way.
The wildest I have ever gotten with these sort of home parties is Tupperware. It wasn’t the Tupperware that was so wild, it was the idea that I thought I could or should host another party of my own so that the hostess of the infecting, I mean, original, party could get bonus points, deeper discounts on her own purchases, and that mega, three-cooler picnic set as a thank you gift.
In order for the hostess to get the gift, the other parties that were spawned from her original, had to be executed within a couple of weeks, like some punishment for an offense before the dust from all the evidence settles.
The thing about gifts is that the very term implies that it is free. Last time I checked, a gift was something given willingly, and something that the recipient did need not to prove his or her worth for. Oh wait – let me save this thread for the Easter column.
Anyway, the time that I tried to host a home party was back in the 80’s. The 1980’s, thank you, in case you had some image of me picking cotton and then returning from the fields after dark to host some sort of Pewter-ware Party. Yes, I am taunting readers for feedback. You haven’t been writing to me, so I must goad you.
There were a couple of fatal flaws with my grand plans to host a Tupperware party. First, I had pretty much the same circle of friends as the hostess. In fact, if anything, mine was a subset of her circle – at best, it was a smaller ring, like a dartboard target, when compared to my pastor’s wife who was, at the time, the young mom of a preschooler and a newborn. So naturally, my guest list was going to happily include these same lucky women to come attend a duplicate party in rapid succession.
The second fatal flaw involved my few, extra-circle friends. These friends were fellow students, both undergraduates (overworked) and graduate students (underfed), whose only interest in Tupperware was what it might contain and whether it might still be consumable. They did like parties, of course, but Tupperware rarely featured in them.
And what did Tupperware parties lack? Glossy brochures were pressed upon us so we could look at, and long for, the kind of life in which Mom molded Jell-O letters so she could spell out each child’s name on his or her dessert plate.
“Games” were played in which you might find yourself the lucky winner of a tangerine-teaser, which was a variant of the orange opener, which itself was a specialized form of the citrus peeler. If you won all three, there was a special snap-on ring onto which each of your spoons could be affixed. You probably already had all these tools amongst your battalion of kitchen gadgets, not including your own God-given fingernails and teeth, which had once, before the arrival of Tupperware, been foolishly believed to be effective in the war on citrus fruits. Clearly, that was a generation of vitamin-C deprived individuals who were deficient in their thinking.
On the day of my own Tupperware party, it dawned on me that attendees would be deficient. I called the representative so I could spare her time and I could spare my shame. Perhaps I was more vitamin-C deprived than I had believed. I think then I made a solemn promise to not be embarrassed into hosting a party with this childish chant: “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a citrus peeler in my eye.”
Good thing, though, that it’s not home parties that really get on my nerves. More next week.
Do you know what really gets on my nerves? No, not home parties in which people try to pawn products off onto their embarrassed friends who attended only so that they could
A) Socialize with friends
B) Munch on goodies that were sequestered from the host family’s appetite
C) Escape from their own domestic duties
D) All of the above
Rarely is the purpose of attending such a party to buy unnecessary things at exorbitant prices, all the while looking casual and carefree while wondering behind your smile how to tell your spouse that it wasn’t good enough to get away the whole evening; you also squandered next week’s grocery money.
Incidentally, have you ever noticed how these home parties spread among friends, like bread mold or some viral or bacterial infection, rippling from an inner circle out to unsuspecting friends and acquaintances? This is where the term “hosting” a party conjures not hospitality, but a biological organism who unwittingly serves as a medium for pathogens to thrive on.
There are home parties for cookware, Tupperware, silver, jewelry, make-up, decorative things, and women’s undergarments in which you are guaranteed to be fitted so that your cup neither runneth over nor saggeth under. Of course, I know there exist other, racier home parties, but I haven’t been invited to any of those. Thank God. Let’s keep it that way.
The wildest I have ever gotten with these sort of home parties is Tupperware. It wasn’t the Tupperware that was so wild, it was the idea that I thought I could or should host another party of my own so that the hostess of the infecting, I mean, original, party could get bonus points, deeper discounts on her own purchases, and that mega, three-cooler picnic set as a thank you gift.
In order for the hostess to get the gift, the other parties that were spawned from her original, had to be executed within a couple of weeks, like some punishment for an offense before the dust from all the evidence settles.
The thing about gifts is that the very term implies that it is free. Last time I checked, a gift was something given willingly, and something that the recipient did need not to prove his or her worth for. Oh wait – let me save this thread for the Easter column.
Anyway, the time that I tried to host a home party was back in the 80’s. The 1980’s, thank you, in case you had some image of me picking cotton and then returning from the fields after dark to host some sort of Pewter-ware Party. Yes, I am taunting readers for feedback. You haven’t been writing to me, so I must goad you.
There were a couple of fatal flaws with my grand plans to host a Tupperware party. First, I had pretty much the same circle of friends as the hostess. In fact, if anything, mine was a subset of her circle – at best, it was a smaller ring, like a dartboard target, when compared to my pastor’s wife who was, at the time, the young mom of a preschooler and a newborn. So naturally, my guest list was going to happily include these same lucky women to come attend a duplicate party in rapid succession.
The second fatal flaw involved my few, extra-circle friends. These friends were fellow students, both undergraduates (overworked) and graduate students (underfed), whose only interest in Tupperware was what it might contain and whether it might still be consumable. They did like parties, of course, but Tupperware rarely featured in them.
And what did Tupperware parties lack? Glossy brochures were pressed upon us so we could look at, and long for, the kind of life in which Mom molded Jell-O letters so she could spell out each child’s name on his or her dessert plate.
“Games” were played in which you might find yourself the lucky winner of a tangerine-teaser, which was a variant of the orange opener, which itself was a specialized form of the citrus peeler. If you won all three, there was a special snap-on ring onto which each of your spoons could be affixed. You probably already had all these tools amongst your battalion of kitchen gadgets, not including your own God-given fingernails and teeth, which had once, before the arrival of Tupperware, been foolishly believed to be effective in the war on citrus fruits. Clearly, that was a generation of vitamin-C deprived individuals who were deficient in their thinking.
On the day of my own Tupperware party, it dawned on me that attendees would be deficient. I called the representative so I could spare her time and I could spare my shame. Perhaps I was more vitamin-C deprived than I had believed. I think then I made a solemn promise to not be embarrassed into hosting a party with this childish chant: “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a citrus peeler in my eye.”
Good thing, though, that it’s not home parties that really get on my nerves. More next week.
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