Tonight I had to attend what would be "back to school night" in a normal school, but since J goes to a Montessori school, it is back to school night on crack. First there was a pot luck dinner with awkward mingling. And a bizarre selection of food because we were assigned to bring a dish for a particular course (apps, main, dessert) by last name but there were too many people with last names in the dessert category. I know, dear reader, you are worried that my homemade panna cotta got lost in the shuffle. Yeah right, more like cheesecake from a bakery in the Comcast Center food court.
I digress. After dinner was a "workshop." With icebreakers. I admit that perhaps I dislike too many things, including but not limited to, pictures of babies dressed as flowers, Chuck Palahniuk novels, city wide scavenger hunts for adults, cooked salmon, Disney Princesses, etc., but ICEBREAKERS are also on the list. I HATE THEM. Find someone who is left handed!!! One of you has met the President!!! Seriously, just kill me now. While tonight's icebreaker at least involved our kids' classroom and was only five questions long with one BONUS question, it still sucked.
I digress again. Weird dinner and ICEBREAKERS were not the full extent of the torture. So you know how things like this are almost bearable if you have a go-to person to talk to during the awkward dinner? Or someone that you can turn to and make fun of the parent who seriously just asked how many times the children wash their hands per day (if that is what you are worried about lady, you better be the one to volunteer for all the shit they want parents to do because clearly you have alot of time on your hands)? Well, when I went to roll my eyes at the hipster*/rock-a-billy, nose ringed, tatted up mom who needed attention like I need a date (read: badly) who asked who "my person" was - she wanted to know my kid's name but couldn't just ask like a normal person because she was so tragically hip - I only had X to commiserate with. On top of the fact that we do not particularly enjoy each other's company, he doesn't appreciate me criticizing the tragically hip.
Not to be dramatic, but it was what I imagine it was like when during the Tudor period some people were not just beheaded, but hung first THEN took down alive THEN beheaded. Here it was not just awkward dinner, but workshop with icebreakers, and then having only X as company and to joke with. Blech.
*Please note that while I rail against hipsters alot, I don't have a problem with people who are legitimately being themselves, including genuinely hip people. Anyway, this sentiment applies to anyone who trying too hard to be something; not just hipsters - it could be a dirty hippie/trustafarian, a suited up douche-bag handing his card out at the bar, whoever.
3 comments:
I love the comments M. I hate Icebreakers....but hating city-wide scavenger hunts??? Sacriligious!!! I just suggested this to Teensy yesterday.
It does sound like a highly heinous experience, but at least you have made the torture hilarious so all of us could enjoy it! :)
P.S. I hope your list of things you hate does not include the citywide scavenger hunt for adults that I WON in DC last year. Because that one was AWESOME.
Ok, these are my experiences with scavenger hunts (at least in the past few years): (1) as a summer associate event at my firm, which 'nuff said, and (2) as I was carrying an obscene amount of drying cleaning and was nearly ran over by a team of people in matching t-shirts and fanny packs shouting about trying to find a mural or something.
So perhaps I just need to see what it is like to be a winner like TA (congrats on that, totally deserved after the peeps denial). Or participate in one in concrete city, with the hopes that there will be no fanny packs and one of the things we have to find is Taco Cabana.
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