It's Relative

If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you'll be going, 'you know, we're alright. We are dang near royalty.' 

Jeff Foxworthy

I don't fancy myself to be a great party planner.  Mediocre at best.  Sometimes I think maybe I don't give myself enough credit though.  It depends on who I'm comparing myself to.

I was looking online at party ideas and I came across this idea:

A good idea for a party is for everyone to show up with a wig and then swap wigs by the end of the night.  The host should have some extra wigs on hand for those people who arrive without a wig.

!?

 

1) I don't want to wear a wig to a party.

2) I don't want to go to a party where other people are wearing wigs.

3) I don't want to swap wigs with anyone.

I googled wig parties though and they're a thing.  It's not just one person's crazy idea of a good time.  Have you ever been to a wig party?  Am I missing something?

The site that recommended the wig party also suggested "hiring a castle for formal parties".

I'm thinking maybe the site originated in the U.K.  I don't know of any castles for hire around here.  Unless you count Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.

This all led me to start thinking about a party I attended with Adam back in his Yale days.  It was the Christmas party for the students in his graduate program.  The party was held at Mory's.

picture swiped from Wikipedia

I dressed carefully because I felt slightly intimidated by the graduate students at Yale.   They were a whole lot smarter than me and seemed infinitely more sophisticated.  I was from a log house in the middle of the sagebrush and had been dropped in a city where I continually got lost (there were no mountains to help me navigate).  I was barely keeping it together while learning to be a mother far away from anything familiar.  I didn't know if I had it in me to pretend like I was a person that could string intelligible sentences together at a Christmas party.  

We took nearly one-year-old Braeden with us.  In addition to be exceedingly poor, we didn't leave him with babysitters because I was not constitutionally equipped to part with my baby.  (I know, you're shocked, right?)

We went to Mory's and as we walked through the smoke-filled lower level, I willed Braeden not to inhale.  I grew up waitressing in smoke filled casinos and went home smelling like an ash tray but I didn't want my tender boy to breathe any smoke.  Ever.  (I know, I was darling. As Braeden would say now, "I don't know whether to smack you or pat you on the head and tell you it's going to be OK.")

We climbed the creaky stairs and entered a crowded room filled with Adam's classmates.  We sat in a corner.  I think I was the only spouse there.  I know Braeden was the only baby there.   A big table filled the room and people were seated around it.  They were passing around huge urns filled with an unknown alcoholic concoction.  They were all in varying degrees of drunkenness and singing.  They'd apparently run out of Christmas songs and had moved on to Hanukkah songs.  Their cheeks were flushed and eyes were glassy and no one seemed to truly be having very much fun.  There was a forced merriness to it that was kind of sad.

We were seated next to a guy that was in the class ahead of Adam (it was a two year program).  He was also a Mormon, married with children but we didn't really know him because he went to the grown-up family ward instead of the student one like we did.  Was there a token married white male Mormon each year?  Some affirmative action plan we were unaware of?  His wife wasn't there.  He leaned over to us and said, "I should have gone to Relief Society with my wife."

Which made me think, they should have asked his wife and or even me to plan the party.

For all of my inexperience and woefully lacking cosmopolitan-ness, I think I could have planned a better party.

At the very least I would have included chocolate.