Our smiles and greetings were completely ignored, as if we were low ranking primates walking slack-shouldered around the perimeter of alpha animals. Fine with me. That way I could do as I wished without the pressure of making conversation with strangers.
I boldly filled my plate with the most unfamiliar foods and poured a glass of organic wine. Anticipating an exiting gustatory event for my first mouthful I forked up the ugliest stuff, sure that taste would make up for appearance.
Wrong. Very wrong.
I deeply wanted to spit it out, but showed remarkable restraint. Only a grimace gave me away.
Now I know the first rule of potlucks is to utter nothing but praise for the food, but I had already determined that we were invisible in the press of people all glibly chatting about topics beyond our scope of wealth. And truly, I spoke so quietly that lip reading would have been helpful. All I did was lean toward Spouse Man, point to the smeary pile of brown on my plate and advise him lovingly, "Don't get any of this tasteless goo."
Immediately a woman materialized behind me. A tall woman with large aggressive earrings. She said (I think into a megaphone), "I made that. It's polenta."
Now I've met polenta before and this was no polenta. It was more like Cream of Spam, extra grainy.
I apologized, stammering something unintelligible about a cook's poetic license. I even shoveled more of the glop into my mouth without shuddering. She watched until the heat radiating from my fuchsia-toned face drove her away, surely toward people more polite and gracious than a potluck food slandering boor.
I slunk off to drink more organic wine near a large potted plant. From this unobtrusive vantage point I pretended to be a party version of Jane Goodall, carefully watching the behavior of my own species. Still stinging with shame after hurting the feelings of Aggressive Earring Polenta Woman, I'm sure I wasn't objective. But I did find common traits among my fellow potluckers. I observed that we humans indulge in the same expressive pouting, posturing and nit-picking found in any group of chimpanzees.
Except chimps would have thrown the food.
Laura Grace Weldon's new book is Free Range Learning.
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