WOOHOO!!!! IT'S OFFICIAL!!!!!!! i'm boring...

I've suspected as much for many years now but last night it was made PAINFULLY clear to me that, YES, I AM BORING!!!

I went to a Southern FM Radio Christmas party last night where there were at least 200 people. I was part of the St. Margaret's / Whiteway Lane Centre group. (One of the moms organized this "Mum's Nite Out" thing and I knew about it 3 months ago and paid for it last month.)



The evening started off a little hectically b/c I was told the time was 7:30 and I was sharing a cab with 3 other women. About 6:40 I'm in my underwear (but hair and make-up done already--WHEW!) and I hear a car horn. "SURELY that's not the cab since we don't have to be there til 7:30," I thought. A minute went by and the horn blew again. "You gotta be kiddin' me," I thought. Another minute or 2 went by and then KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK on my door. "OH, TOURETTES!!!" ("Tourettes" is now my expletive of choice, btw!) So, Roy answered the door for me and I'm now in my skirt with my top hanging off me cuz it's not zipped yet and one shoe halfway on my foot. I can hear Atlanta, my neighbor from across the street, at the door saying, "Does she just want to meet us there?" I shout down, "I'm just putting my shoes on. I'll be right down!" At this point I still needed to do the girl thing of switching purses! WHATEV! It was time to go OUT and have a great night of fun, food, drink and DANCING!!!

I finally make it to the cab and Libby, another mom, is there with Atlanta and me and we start talking about wonderfully funny things. We pick up Claire, the last of our team and head off to the Hilton Metropole Hotel down on the seafront, still having wonderfully funny conversations. We arrive at the venue and we're the only ones from "Mum's Nite Out" there so far but the room has plenty of people in it -- maybe 100 or so. We're greeted with a table spread with a hundred glasses of red and white wine and orange juice from which to choose and, upon entering the main room itself, a professional photographer with a fabulous setup, a bar and tables as far as the eye could see!! The music is pulsating and the lights follow suit.

We make our way to our table -- REWIND!!! The other 3 make their way to the table and I "nip off to the loo" (like that little British expression there?!?) cuz I still have to put on my lips!! With that done, I snake my way through the maze of tables and people to the girls who've found our table and are in the process of swapping name markers cuz they all want us to sit together. It's a good thing, too, cuz whoever put the names on the tables had NO idea who knew who! They had me sitting w/ a bunch of people called the Pecksniffs!! What an UNFORTUNATE name!!! Anyway, our table is RIGHT NEXT TO THE DANCE FLOOR!!! How COOL is that?!?! We stand around our table for a good 10 minutes just talking (probably cuz we're not sure if we should sit yet) and wonder where everyone else is and if maybe I was right to think it started at 7:30, not 7:00 and other such trivial matters.

Time goes by, as time often does, and the others arrive and tables fill up and food is served and a single-earringed-toothless-wonder-of-a-photographer roams around taking pics of people he will later sell to you at £5 a pop and great conversations are had by all and and and... The warm-up DJ is just great fun cuz he's tellin' it like it" T-I- IS!" He's telling people to find their seats and sit down cuz the food service won't start until everyone is seated, right? Well about 5 minutes go by and no one has even shown the slightest bit of interest in finding their seats. The DJ says, "Please find your seats. We can't get started until EVERYONE is seated. If you need a SAT NAV to find your table, mine is in my car. I can't help you", "To the 15 of you on the dance floor, I'll repeat this cuz you may not have cared the first time . . . we can't dance until the hotel gives us the go-ahead so SIT YOUR ASSES DOWN" and stuff like that. Well, 10:00 rolls around and the REAL DJ arrives. The lights go down, the music goes up and the DJ riles up the crowd!!! DANCING HAS COMMENCED!! WOOHOO!!!

Everyone at my table gets up and makes a beeline for the dance floor. . . except me. My friend Neda asks, "Aren't you going to dance?" "I'll wait til something good comes on," I say. I was so full I didn't wanna get up! AND I was tired. AND my armpit was STILL hurting! (My right axillary (armpit) lymph node is swollen and VERY painful! SO, I took some Hydrocodone earlier that day. That stuff could make a bull elephant light enough to skip across daisies!) Several songs later other moms come up to me and try to get me out on the dance floor and my excuse is "I'm guarding stuff!!" . . . Well, I WAS!! Everyone I was sitting w/ just left their purses out on full display for all to see they must be protected at all costs, right? RIGHT?!?

Several MORE songs later, some members of my group are tired and come sit for a song or two and take a breather. "COME ON!! You gotta dance," they say. "I will in a minute," I tell them. Meanwhile, the photos that the aforementioned toothless wonder has been taking throughout the night are being shown on a screen behind the DJ along with some of the music videos of the songs being blasted into my ears by the 10 ton amps 15 feet away. One of them was Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and my eyes are freakin' TRANSFIXED!!! I'm just in awe of the fact that I remember watching this video on MTV back in the day!! Whitney's eye make-up was, like, teal and gold with a RED highlight and she had this mega-permed hair that put all poodles to shame!

Well, now a whole hour of dancing has gone by and I've done nothing but watch said dancing and the funny slideshow of pics and throw-back videos. Some really good music is being played and I'm feelin' like I may get up and dance. Along comes "Sindy Sledgehammer -- EXTRA portly" who proceeds to "dance" her elbow into the top of my HEAD!!! GREAT! So now I have a headache on top of all the other crap. (My head is still sore today!) "SORRY!" she said. "SORRY," as she stretched out her hand towards me with a pained expression on her face to show that she was sincere. I tell you that every time I saw her afterwards I looked at her with slanty eyes! SLANTY EYES!!! Hell hath no fury like the Slanty-Eye-Stare!!!

Still more songs are play and still more and more people try to get me to come dance and still I say, "I'm guarding stuff!" (DANGER!! Deepitude approaching!!! DEEPITUDE APPROACHING!!!) As I sit there for another hour alone at the table with my thoughts (and pain) keeping me company, I look around and suddenly feel completely and utterly . . . empty. There are more than 200 people there, about 20 of whom's facial features I recognize and about 7 of whom's names I know and not one person there seems real or alive to me. "What is the point of all of this," I ask myself. "Why are all these people here at this particular juncture in time and space?" I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm watching all these people dance and laugh and have fun and I'm just . . . just . . . NOT! This seems strange to me b/c I think this is the first time I've been to a dance and DIDN'T dance! Neda said something earlier that evening to me while we were sitting waiting for people to arrive. She said, "I feel like I just don't know how to socialize." I could totally relate to that. I don't know how to be around people in a social setting! I don't know how to "chit chat" or respond to stories people tell me or any of that "phatic communion" crap. I've never really bough into the whole "talk for the sake of talking" crock. If I have something interesting to say, I'll say it but if it's about the weather or what I or so-n-so did today, forget it! I'm just no good at that.

I once went to a 5 Rhythms class and danced "my dance" for 2 hours straight! One thing the 5 Rhythms says is that EVERYONE has a dance and if you don't dance "your dance", who will? Last night I didn't have a dance. That is a rather unsettling feeling.