Thursday, February 13, 2014

Let's Party!

My nephew had a birthday party recently. It was pretty okay, I guess.

Being a youngish, childless adult puts you in an interesting position during children's birthday parties.


You don't have much to say to the other grown-ups, but you're too old to join the children without someone calling the police. Or, worse, asking you to babysit.


So, in this case, I adopted the no-fail strategy that I use during grown-up parties: I wandered over to a corner and pretended to be really interested in the birthday cake.


But even in my quiet corner, I was still surrounded by so many clean, attractive, white people that I started to feel a little bit on edge.

As far as I could tell, these people had met maybe once before, but somehow, they were able to make polite, yet interesting small talk. None of this boring crap about the cold weather and the un-salted roads--let's talk about that new school principal, shall we?
It was amazing, especially to someone who's so shit at small-talk that she spends more time chatting up the cake.

Then again, these people shared something important that I do not--they knew the monumental burden of raising another human being. They may not have much of anything else in common, but like soldiers in the trenches, they have ENOUGH in common to share a few, easy words.

Which just showed me that while I may not have a totally un-maternal temperament, I wouldn't be able to survive the social aspects of parenting. The thought of having to sit and make interesting small talk with perfectly friendly strangers makes me want to get my tubes tied.


No comments:

Post a Comment