Do humorously ironic curses really happen? You better believe they do.
M threw me a birthday party on Saturday. A semi-surprise thing. I know, isn’t she cool? She hates parties, I like them , so it was a truly selfless gesture. If it were a Hollywood movie and M had some curse on her it would be lifted, because it seems like in those movies the cure for every curse is doing a selfless act. Remember that if you ever have some humorously ironic curse placed on you.
It was set up as a small get together, but then people just kept arriving (hence, ‘semi-surprise’). There were forty or fifty indications that something bigger was afoot…my friend A called with no interest at all in talking to me. M spent four hours putting together shish-kabobs for a dinner that was supposedly going to be for about six people. One of the people I did know was coming called at one point, and panicked, not knowing if she was one of the “knowns” or “unknowns” and concluded the conversation by saying, “So, have a great day and uh, I’ll, uh, see you, uh, sometime.” And so forth. Did I suspect? Of course I did, at some level (hey, I sound like Robert Evans – “the Kid Stays in the Picture” guy. He always writes like that: Was I excited about my party? You bet I was. Was there cake and excessive booze? Oh my, yes. Come to think of it, Donald Rumsfeld does that too. Shit.).
Anyway.
I did suspect, but fortunately had a horrible birthday some years ago that cured me of believing in such things. My fifteenth birthday I was positive my parents were throwing me a surprise party. None of my friends would do anything with me for whatever reason – too tired, doing something with someone else, etc. – and my parents barely mentioned my birthday. In the interest of fairness I should point out that I told my parents I didn’t want to do anything for my birthday, but people say that all the time and it’s always, one hundred percent of the time, now unto the furthest reaches of time and space, a big fat load of crap and everyone knows it. The capper though, was that at one point my parents asked me to go to the store a pick up, like a little 99-cent carton of ricotta cheese or some nonsense. The store was about four or five mile away and I was just turning fifteen, so I had to ride my bike. This seemed like an obvious excuse to get me out of the house for a little while. It wasn’t. They just, apparently, really really really needed ricotta cheese and since I was just sitting around sighing they figured it’d be fun birthday adventure for me. The point is, that after this, people could be hanging “Happy Birthday, Byron” banners and I’d figure it was probably for something else.
Good party, Saturday, though. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I usually have to make myself mingle because chit chat is tough for me and one thing that sucks about being adult, though, is most adults are so God damn boring. A few people would not shut up about what kind of wood our floors are made out of. It’s my floor and I my interest in the conversation lasted about this long:
Guest: “Nice hardwood floors. What kind of wood is it?”
Me: “I don’t know. Cedar?”
Guest: “No, it doesn’t look like cedar to me. The red streaks kind of look like blah blah blah blah blah…”
I mentally exited at this point, but this conversation went on and on and on and people came back to it several times throughout the evening, and a couple guys were hunkered down, feeling the wood, listening to it, licking it, taking samples back to the lab and so on.
Also, someone did the obligatory freaky-weird flip out. Everyone’s getting along, laughing, and it’s like there’s some biological imperative for someone to go batshit. Remember in Jurassic Park when they fill in the Dinosaur DNA with frog, a type that can change its gender if survival demands it? And even though these are the most advanced minds on Earth it occurs to naught of them that this might happen, and then it does and everyone’s like, “Oh well, of course that happened. Silly us.”? I think that same idea applies here (the changing chemical make up to ensure special balance part, not the other stuff. The party was populated my neither hubristic scientists nor dinosaurs). The species needs someone to get all weird at every party, and if no one does it naturally, some internal switch flips and blam! Crazy time. Oh, the miracle of biology.
It was set up as a small get together, but then people just kept arriving (hence, ‘semi-surprise’). There were forty or fifty indications that something bigger was afoot…my friend A called with no interest at all in talking to me. M spent four hours putting together shish-kabobs for a dinner that was supposedly going to be for about six people. One of the people I did know was coming called at one point, and panicked, not knowing if she was one of the “knowns” or “unknowns” and concluded the conversation by saying, “So, have a great day and uh, I’ll, uh, see you, uh, sometime.” And so forth. Did I suspect? Of course I did, at some level (hey, I sound like Robert Evans – “the Kid Stays in the Picture” guy. He always writes like that: Was I excited about my party? You bet I was. Was there cake and excessive booze? Oh my, yes. Come to think of it, Donald Rumsfeld does that too. Shit.).
Anyway.
I did suspect, but fortunately had a horrible birthday some years ago that cured me of believing in such things. My fifteenth birthday I was positive my parents were throwing me a surprise party. None of my friends would do anything with me for whatever reason – too tired, doing something with someone else, etc. – and my parents barely mentioned my birthday. In the interest of fairness I should point out that I told my parents I didn’t want to do anything for my birthday, but people say that all the time and it’s always, one hundred percent of the time, now unto the furthest reaches of time and space, a big fat load of crap and everyone knows it. The capper though, was that at one point my parents asked me to go to the store a pick up, like a little 99-cent carton of ricotta cheese or some nonsense. The store was about four or five mile away and I was just turning fifteen, so I had to ride my bike. This seemed like an obvious excuse to get me out of the house for a little while. It wasn’t. They just, apparently, really really really needed ricotta cheese and since I was just sitting around sighing they figured it’d be fun birthday adventure for me. The point is, that after this, people could be hanging “Happy Birthday, Byron” banners and I’d figure it was probably for something else.
Good party, Saturday, though. I enjoyed it for the most part, but I usually have to make myself mingle because chit chat is tough for me and one thing that sucks about being adult, though, is most adults are so God damn boring. A few people would not shut up about what kind of wood our floors are made out of. It’s my floor and I my interest in the conversation lasted about this long:
Guest: “Nice hardwood floors. What kind of wood is it?”
Me: “I don’t know. Cedar?”
Guest: “No, it doesn’t look like cedar to me. The red streaks kind of look like blah blah blah blah blah…”
I mentally exited at this point, but this conversation went on and on and on and people came back to it several times throughout the evening, and a couple guys were hunkered down, feeling the wood, listening to it, licking it, taking samples back to the lab and so on.
Also, someone did the obligatory freaky-weird flip out. Everyone’s getting along, laughing, and it’s like there’s some biological imperative for someone to go batshit. Remember in Jurassic Park when they fill in the Dinosaur DNA with frog, a type that can change its gender if survival demands it? And even though these are the most advanced minds on Earth it occurs to naught of them that this might happen, and then it does and everyone’s like, “Oh well, of course that happened. Silly us.”? I think that same idea applies here (the changing chemical make up to ensure special balance part, not the other stuff. The party was populated my neither hubristic scientists nor dinosaurs). The species needs someone to get all weird at every party, and if no one does it naturally, some internal switch flips and blam! Crazy time. Oh, the miracle of biology.
posted by MacLymont at 4:03 PM
4 Comments:
I know what you mean about adults talking about boring and totally unimportant things like floors and crap like that...my parents do it all the times with their friends.
My parents don't tend to talk about amazingly boring things, actually.. Not generally at least. The most boring dinner conversations consist of when my dad needs to talk about business type things with my mom, since he owns his own painting company and she's a part of it.. But other than that, conversations with my parents are always um.. interesting, I suppose. And somehow, they also tend to be fairly perverted - where as, at times, if I mention something sexual my mom gives me a lecture about it. Hypocritical? Maybe a little.
Replies should probably never be this long, but I don't exactly have anything better to do I suppose.
a few thoughts-
i know you shared the 15th bday experience not to get consoling responses. i'm sure you don't want to hear any of that, oh i'm so sorry, oh why that's terrible--all that painfully sympathetic business.
but that's really terrible, i can't believe something like that actually happened. and i'm sorry.
the party sounded like a success.
and your explanation of why adults go crazy is the most rationale missive on the topic i have heard.
is it that boring adults were always boring, or that somewhere along the line they take a turn for the worst? i hope it's not the latter, for all our sakes.
It's hard to tell, isn't it? What elements of growing up are wisdom and experience, and which are spiritual surrender and numbness.
It's also nice of you to mention the 15th birthday thing. It's always reassuring when something really bothers you and then someone else says. "Wow, that'd be really bothersome."
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