That Space Cadet Glow

Holiday party season is in full swing. I know this because I have already hosted a few. This is significant because I can:

1. Remember hosting them.



2. Did not "hoist" anything.



3. Made no embarassing post-party phone calls

Yes, gone are the days when there was a bleary two-week stretch of regrettable moments, punctuated with sincere apologies. It was during this period, many years ago, that I was late to work for one of the very few times in my life. When I say "late", I mean more than an hour. I mean more than two hours. I mean the kind of late where your boss calls you and wakes you from a hung over coma to remind you that Christmas Eve is, in fact, the busiest day of the year at a video store.

Alas, my friend and I had been up very late the night before getting in shape for the next night's company Christmas party. The problem was, we had to live through the mother of all days in a whirlwind retail environment feeling like most of our internal organs had been replaced with cast iron replicas. But lo and behold, at ten o'clock when the doors were finally closed and virtually every tape in the place had been rented (even "Rhinestone"), we happily tipped a few more to congratulate our success and survival.

And there were more opportunities as New Year's Eve approached. We toasted and celebrated, rang out the old and rang in the new. We were everybody's favorite party animals. Then, suddenly, we were back to business as usual. That meant that we had to wait all the way until Super Bowl Sunday to have a solid excuse to tie one on.

But I was never late to work again. Sure, there plenty of mornings when I had the look and feel of a well-used latrine, but I shoveled myself out the door and made myself pay the price for the night before. Imagine how pleased I am to find, as I age more gracefully, that you can have plenty of fun essentially for free. Do I miss it? Every so often, when I'm watching a particularly earnest exchange over a pair of hastily emptied glasses of red wine, or when I hear a heartfelt appreciation of some tiny thing brought on by one too many beers. But I still laugh, and I have a good time, and I don't have to rely on somebody else's account of the evening to know that I did. Cheers!