Next week we're going on the first family vacation we've taken since Josie was born.  Here's how it happened:

November, 2005

Midnight Thursday, Jay informed me that we'd been invited to a fancy formal charity benefit.  On Saturday.
"I'm buying myself a tux, so wear something formal."  He said.
Formal?
That means something worn with shoes, right?
"Don't you have any formal dresses?" he asked.
"Oh formal. I thought you said 'former' dresses."
Then I introduced myself, as he apparently has no idea who I am.
He said not to worry, he'd find me something to wear.

!!!????????

The strangest thing is, he did.  Not only did he find a simple little black dress in my closet, he found a sparkly, lacy drapey thing for me to wear over it that made it look...fancy.  So  I bought a pair of shoes with heels and sparkly things stuck on them nd I was as reay as I would ever be.  I even bought a new pair of panty hose.  I haven't worn panty hose since the eighties.  I was very careful and read the back chart to figure out what size I needed. The were damn near impossible to get on.  In retrospect, the weight listed on the back of the package must have meant my entire body, not each leg...anyway, Jay enjoyed watching me put them on.  It's a good thing I got dressed first; he would've popped his cummerbund, he laughed so hard.  It was a workout, but I got them on. I think they were made of kevlar.

I also wore the super cool, dangly antique rhinestone earrings my grandmother gave me.  They're from the twenties and very art deco and Margy wanted them too, which makes me love them even more.  As a final touch, I had just picked up my new needlepoint purse; it's black and sparkly and has the original Star Wars poster art for a design, so even if my entire outfit cost less than forty bucks, I did have the coolest purse in attendance.  Just in case anyone pointed at me and yelled "Wait a minute!! She has no business in high heels!!" I could distract everyone with my sweet purse, then kick off my bogus heels and run away.

It never came to that.  I looked good, Jay looked great and everyone had a swell time. People did compliment my purse.  The event was a charity auction and banquet.  The place was crawling with basketball people.  Coaches of every level, sports figures, tv personalities.  They all look older and fatter in real life than on tv.  The featured speaker was Coach Ken Carter, a high school basketball coach about whom a movie was made a year or so ago starring Samuel L. Jackson.  His talk was very good; inspirational, entertaining and short.  Afterwards was the auction.  When we all turned our chairs to the auctioneer, I wound up sitting next to Coach Carter.  He kept grabbing my arm and pretending I was bidding.  It was funny.  It was really funny because we were drinking wine like it was going out of style.  It was even funnier because while I was pretending to bid on stuff, Jay, who was sitting six feet behind me was really bidding on stuff.

One minute I'm feeling all clever 'cause I'm blending into this crowd in an $8.00 dress and a pair of $16.00 shoes and the next minute I owe some charity $2500.00 for a week in Vail.  I was going to hit Jay over the head with an empty wine bottle to keep him from bidding on anything else when someone pointed out that the auction was over.  Oh well, at least he didn't buy the mink coat.  If I owned a mink coat, I'd have to completely rething my self image.

Then there was dancing.  the band was good, and the audience was better.  We'd all been drinking a lot of wine and at least half the audience was uninhibited dance-wise and they were having so much fun that after a song or two, the white folks joined in.  I was not the only woman who left her shoes under the table to dance, but I would've been the only one to strip off her panty hose, so I didn't.  Besides, I was afraid I'd need the jaws of life to get them off.  (Later, it turns out all we needed was some mood music and a pound of butter, but some things are private, okay?)

Our table was definitely having the most fun.  We not only danced with wild abandon, we sang along, loudly and badly.  We managed to accumulate all the bottles of wine left on other tables by less adventurous banqueteers and when the music finally stopped, Jay held court for quite some time with a slew of young coaches.  Finally, after turning the lights on,  the poor wait staff turned them up realllly bright and we realized that if we didn't go soon and allow the working stiffs to go home they were going to hit us with search lights and begin interrogations.

Our designated driver had actually left the party hours earlier.  He had an 'early flight'.  So that plan didn't work out so well...
but everyone got home safe and sound and in the morning it turns out we really did spend a lot of money on a sweet vacation we can't afford.  but it's all in the name of a good cause!

The moral of the story is that you CAN make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, provided you have enough wine and twenty five hundred bucks.

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion