Fantasy Dinner Party

Ugh. I always thought that was the cheesiest question: Who would the guests be at your fantasy dinner party?

Answer #1: Einstein, Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Franklin

Really? With these egos in the room, nobody would get a word in edgewise--dinner would consist of 4 distinct conversations going simultaneously (i'll spare you my imagined dialog).

Other popular guests exist--Jesus, Paul, Peter--other religious figures come to mind. For racial balance, MLK, Malcolm X...Hot chicks are always welcome of course :). Deceased relatives make the list, too. Quirky people like to throw in a name or two that nobody knows who the hell it is. Some people are willing to waste their whole fantasy dinner party on quirky choices just to make themselves appear to be fabulously eccentric.

We got together for a "supper club" meeting of a group of our friends--there are about 40 couples that sign up and get randomly assigned to have a dinner together--like a social mixer-upper to break up the cliques.

Fran called me to tell me who our group was when she got the email--she was laughing.

We were having it at the home of a really nice couple--they just completed building their home pretty far away on the other side of the lake--maybe an hour's drive away, but maybe even more on a Friday evening. He is an elementary school principal and his wife has a degree in interior design. Their house is decorated in a French Cottage fashion--expertly done and breathtakingly beautiful and tidy. The kind of thing that makes you a little disappointed to come home after--like: why didn't I think of doing that/painting that THAT color/decorating with THAT?

Other attendees include my doctor (as in "turn your head and cough"), his wife who has an extremely strong personality. Another woman, a cancer survivor with one leg and an equally strong personality, would be attending without her husband (the kind of person who proceeds to tell you how to raise your kids when she has absolutely no experience with kids at all).

Lastly: a tie-in from a previous blog entry. A couple friend of ours had a tragedy occur--their babysitter dropped their child down the stairs and the child died. The fourth guest: the babysitter.

This was essentially the dinner list from hell. I was hoping to take a valium and drink 3 shots of tequila before going in.

Another idea: this would make a great cage-match.

Dinner went surprisingly well. Thankfully, the babysitter did not show up--that would have been unbearablly awkward. Cancer survivor talked over the doctor about how to diagnose certain illnesses--he kindly let her make a fool out of herself.

One funny thing: I was born one year plus one day after Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. Cancer survivor was born one year and one day before me: on that very day--she was shocked that I knew the significance of her birthday.

Blah blah blah--at one point we sat around and talked about mowing the yard. It made me reconsider those cheesy questions: You have to burn one of your attendees and get someone to shake up the room a little.

Kaitlyn decided to take matters into her own hands--she was the youngest of the mobile children at the party, and she felt she was being left out--so she walked around clobbering the other kids. It's called the Terrible Twos, and it can be embarassing for the parents. Cancer survivor started lecturing on what we can do to stop it, drawing blank looks.

We made our way to the car--I put Kaitlyn into her car seat, we loaded up the food containers (Fran made banana pudding and homemade chocolate brownies). I went around to the garage to get Ryan and I was called:

"MIKE!"

I knew exactly what was up--it had to be a snake. And I wasn't disappointed.

The weather was very warm for the first time, and there were woods all around us and a lake across the street. We were in the middle of snake central.

Someone had actually, earlier in the evening, asked our hostess about wildlife that they have seen (I make a point of trying not to ask to hide my paranoia). She had responded that they had killed two snakes a year ago, but since then had only seen opossums, raccoons, and a deer.

But when I came around the corner from the garage, I saw the look on Fran's face and she called out seriously "It's a snake--and it has a big head!" (good indication that it is venomous).

I called out to her "Well, then, get back and close the door!" Her mama-bear instinct had kicked in and she was "guarding" the car because Kaitlyn was inside buckled into her car seat.

She did as I said and I walked over to where the snake was--minutes before I had been exactly where it was now lying, loading the car. It was a copperhead--thin, about the diameter of my index finger, and poisonous--about 2 feet long and pretty aggressive--it got to the grass and turned around and came back toward me, stopping short. The homeowner came up from behind me with a long-handled shovel and snapped it's head off with a couple of blows.

We took the snake into the garage and showed the body to boys--Ryan was fascinated. We warned them to steer clear of this type of snake, and how they can be dangerous.

In the meantime, I heard the doctor call out "Here's another one!" He had taken a flashlight and searched around his car before bringing his girls out to leave--this snake, also a copperhead, was over 3 feet long and very thick-bodied--it was nestled up against a tree beside the car and stretched out into the adjacent woods...it was considerably more threatening--it's size coupled with the snake raising it's head aggressively when the owner approached with his shovel-guillotine before delivering a fatal blow.

Our poor hostess seemed a little embarrassed that the country charm came with the risk of death as we escaped to our cars, twitching nervously at every dark patch on the grass, calling our children to us for safety.

Leave it to my presence to turn a dinner party into a snake-o-rama.

Maybe we should have invited that Crocodile Hunter guy "Beee-utie, Mate! In't she Gorh-jus? What a whoppa!"