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Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
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10:47 p.m. - 2005-06-22
Just in from partying with the PTA Moms. Tough room. Met some very nice women, but the social anxiety was so thick I practically had to shove it out of the way with my hands so I could move. I'm trying to remember some people are terrified by gigs like this so to that I end I kept chanting, "She's not being bitchy, she's scared. Your breath isn't terrible, she's nervous as hell." It helped a little, but there were some actual bitches there and it was hard to separate the nervous from the brujas until my conversational gambits were met with pinchy mouths and "Get lost, you amazon twat" body language. Score one for the Sage, though, my outfit was perfect. French-cut white stretchy t-shirt, low waisted summer weight grey gabardine slacks with wide swishy legs, a thin black belt with nice texture, black T-strap sandals with 2" heels, and a brightly patterned 'silk' scarf in cobalt, grey, black, and white geometrics. Long skinny earrings, a bracelet on each wrist and my new purse completed the ensemble. Dead on, I tell you. Dressy enough not to be an insult to the swank joint where the party was, but not so gussied up I looked like I'd been hanging around since a wedding there the previous weekend. I wasn't kidding about the Amazon part. Sheesh. I caught sight of myself in a big mirror across the room and saw I was a good foot taller than the women I was chatting with. I know I talk about it a lot, but truly it always surprises me to see myself sticking up head and shoulders above a crowd. Didn't upset me particularly, just startled me. I'm normal to myself, you know? Mike, Alex and I are all of a size so it's the norm for me to look them in the eye. Outside my house everybody is 'short' so it's only when someone can disappear under the shelf of my bosom that I notice how short that person is. 97% of the women were strangers to me, only a few had familiar faces. However, we were all there for the same reason, so making conversation wasn't too difficult. After introducing myself I asked what their PTA gig was. Broke the ice quite nicely. Bake sale. Fund raising committee. Breakfast With Books. Of course my gig was Book Fair and most quailed over the idea of taking on the notoriously crowded book fair. I mocked myself a little and said better the book fair than bake sale, after all the idea was to raise money not send folks to the hospital with cracked teeth and ptomaine poisoning. My skills as a pastry chef leave a lot to be desired. That always got a laugh. I'd also admit that the book fair was way better than my old assignment when Alex was in the primary school, back then I was the hair comber on Picture Day. Sympathetic groans all around. For some reason hair comber is the leper job of the PTA. The food was pretty good, if scanty. It was a quasi hors d'oeuvres self-serve thing, not a sit down dinner. Not a chair in the whole room. After two hours of shifting my weight from foot to foot, not to mention my idea of 'dinner' isn't a cheese and fruit tray and some Swedish meatballs, I left before my butt cheeks cramped up entirely and I fainted from hunger. All and all I'm glad I went. 16 years in the various Podunkville PTAs and this is the first time I went to the end of year dinner. Though to be honest, during the Alex years nobody was overly concerned if I actually got the mimeographed memo inviting us to attend. I wasn't only a pariah because I was the hair comber, you know. This bunch of PTA moms seems okay. Some will move over to the intermediate school as I am with Wolf and better I should do a little politic schmoozing than come across as being too uppity to bother coming to their party. I was on the horn with Maureen the other day and I mentioned I was going to the thing tonight. I asked her if she was going and she squawked like I'd asked her when she was setting her dog on fire. She's a PTA member, but she's so beyond the Pale she's not even a hair comber. Don't know what happened, apparently there was some dust-up when her son was in kindergarten. She forks over the dues, but doesn't otherwise participate. I'm gonna change that. I'm going to recruit ALL the fun moms. Shake things up a little. Maureen, unbelievably, is more social than I am. Next year I'll drag her with me and get the other fun moms going too. We'll rock the house. Be too cool if I could really party with the PTA moms, know what I mean? Reporting in from Stepford, ~LA
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