How to Keep a Party From Going Dead

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the Minneapolis Tribune editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
date unknown; probably 1952-1954




 AS IS OUR recurrent fate, my wife and I are mired in social debt.  It is necessary within the month to invite in at least half a dozen couples if we are to square accounts graciously.
    This is quite a project for so short a time and the conflict as to procedure is not yet resolved.  I am ready to forget the whole thing and risk being an outcast, but you know how women are.
   The smart thing might be to have all the debtees over simultaneously and write off the obligation in one whirl.  But this method, while expeditious, has its drawbacks, particularly if the couples aren't acquainted.

   THERE is always the danger that they will be so utterly polite that the affair will stiffen and die, or that two or three of the boys will be violently devoted to old Harry while as many others will be passionately fond of Ike, with a yelling match resulting.
   Or maybe a third of the customers will want to gather at the piano and sing, since they do not know a ruff from a finesse, while the balance figures that an evening without bridge is an evening lost.

   WHEN confronted with a major social ordeal, I always urge my wife to include some character who provides the light touch, somebody who can talk when there is nothing to say but who is not always agonizing about the implications of Russia's new, conciliatory attitude or the goings on along the Gaza strip.
   Call the fellow I have in mind Joe Jamison.  My wife protests that we had the Jamisons over last January and we haven't been inside their house since that committee meeting back in '52.  Besides, if we invite them that will make 16 and we haven't that many decent dessert plates.
   All of which fails to divert me.  Joe will keep the party on its feet.  There will be no strained silences and there will be some laughs, even if we have to roar at that one about the cattleman and the banker.
   "What's the matter with you keeping the party rolling," milady wants to know.  "Are you completely dumb?  You know as many old jokes as Joe Jamison does."
   The point, I try to tell her, is that Joe is a life-of-the-party type.  Not only can he tell jokes, he can also butter up the ladies and talk about baseball, fishing, gardening, painting and women with the men.  He makes a party click.

   ALTHOUGH in the daily routine of activity I seldom go more than 15 minutes without at least mumbling, by inheritance I am Joe's complete antithesis.  At dinner parties I repeatedly clam up like a shy adolescent and am able to manage little more than "please pass the herring."
   My father was even worse.  I have known him to make 50 words suffice for two or three days.  I never knew whether it was because he thought talking was a waste of time or whether he could think of nothing to say.  Whether he could or couldn't, he didn't.

   TO BE ABLE to converse is a talent to envy.  The fellow who can make small talk--which is the type that the mixed social affair requires--fills a pressing need.  If he is brilliant, charming and entertaining and lets the other guy get in an occasional word, he is a real treasure.
   But my hat is off also to the chatterbox and scene-hogger.  He may be a bore or an egoist but he can avert trying social situations.  Better to have someone around who can say something than to sit dumb or be forced to fall back on the weather or Aunt Lucy's arthritis.

   SOME HOSTS guard against silence by confining their entertainment to cocktail parties, or by serving several rounds before dinner.  Then there is conversation aplenty.  At least there is talk.  But this is the coward's expedient. It carries the implication that humans cannot abide each other's company without alcoholic reinforcement.
   The cocktail party represents the greatest of our social insanities, as any enthusiastic participant next morning will attest.  Things will come to a pretty pass indeed if we all finally turn to the jug for laughs and conviviality.
   This is where Joe Jamison comes in.  His tribe should increase.


Copyright 2013 StarTribune.  Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune.  No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.