Open House

I’ve already eaten too many cookies, too many cake slices, too many chips and guacamole and too many coated nuts. I’ve dipped into an array of dips with slices of green and red peppers, carrot sticks and slivers of celery. Isn’t this delightful?

There’s something quite festive about an open house—lax time constraints and momentary lapses of thinking —of what needs to be accomplished. This afternoon I spent several hours at an open house. At first I sat next to a woman who teaches at a local university and since we didn’t know one another we conversed about using the computer for research— and avoiding plagiarism.

I never knew about the Search Engine Colossus. Imagine checking out Guernsey—I had read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society . Imagine living somewhere called: BRITISH CROWN DEPENDENCY OF BAILIWICK OF GUERNSEY. Upon discovering the actual and preferred name I immediately felt an intimacy with the island. —Now to cite that title correctly.

I entered a conversation with someone who anticipated having a discussion with a noted mystery writer when she appeared for a book signing. The topic—motorcycles. Karen discovered that she and the author shared a love for a particular cycle. I’ll need to follow up on that tale. But I did find out that a local pub sponsored dances once a month. It’s difficult to visualize dancers sharing space with a billiard table, but I expect that they made it all work.

“You know the guy who opened up the optician store? He plays the drums in a band.”
“Is the band any good?”
“It’s different.”

After two hours I knew that someone’s dog was diabetic and required shots twice a day, that someone else recently took up quilting, that the school superintendent didn’t want to regionalize, that someone had become a serious birder, that someone erroneously thought I owned a Kindle, that someone wanted a gas stove and because they didn’t have a gas line used propane to fuel the stove, that someone was retiring in three days. I also learned that James Buchanan was the only president that never married, that 300 million cells die in your body every minute, that someone I hadn’t seen in fourteen years looked the same.

I loved moving about the house, talking to different people, dipping a chip, and sensing that no one was in hurry and our differences made the afternoon interesting. There’s an art to holding an open house.