Remember, It’s Just Salad Dressing (and Other Tips for Surviving Summer Party Season)
The summer season of dinner parties and visits and barbecues, for those of us who have outgrown all-night bashes and rock concerts and so on, has reminded me of a few conversational points about these social gatherings. So I thought, partly out of a hope to head off future mistakes for myself and others and partly as a complaint about a few things that have actually just happened, I’d try to make a short list of advisories for visitors:
1. Generally speaking, four hours is a very generous length for most dinner parties. Three and a half is much better.
2. If your hosts–at lunch, dinner, tea, elevenses, whatever–stop taking an active part in the conversation, it probably means they’re ready for your courteous goodbye. Recently, it took almost an hour of utter silence for someone to get that message.
3. Lavish food compliments become a kind of gaffe–a signal of protesting too much. If you’re entertaining someone who says, simply, “This is very good” and leaves it at that, I think you’re more likely to believe him or her than you are someone who falls on the floor in thespian ecstasy over the salad dressing.
4. Don’t forget that the people who have been your hosts have to clean up after you’ve left, unless they have help or caterers. (And even if they do, there is always some restoration of the premises to be done that only they can do.) Try to spare them a little energy for that.
5. Please, please don’t protract goodbyes. Simply fleeing is not good, of course, but awkwardly extended goodbyes often produce empty promises and grievous faux pas, because of the anxiety of separation.
6. Following my own advice, I will now sign off resolutely and wish you many more sociable get-togethers before Labor Day puts us all more painfully back to the grind.
