YOUR DINNER PARTY ENDS BECAUSE PEOPLE NEED TO FART AND POOP.

by: David D. Mattia  <— click on my name — READ ABOUT ME — I need the exposure .  

So, you’re having a Hawaiian-themed dinner party, and you’ve invited about twenty-five of your friends, family, neighbors and/or acquaintances.   You’ve got wine, beer, booze and food, food, FOOD!

You’ve set it all up nicely on a few tables.  The wine you chose -Yellow Tail of course – is displayed with colorful plastic cups on one table and the mixed drinks – Kirkland brand of course –  are set up on another.  Maybe you’ve scrunched all the beer bottles (probably cans) into a big bin of crushed ice upon which you’ve thrown a few fake lemons and plastic pineapple slices to make it look especially festive.   Before the guests arrive, you and your significant other step back to admire your setup.  Wow, this is classy.

Isn’t the luau section of the Dollar Store a whole lot better than places that sell quality stemware and occasion-appropriate linens?  Some people just don’t get it, do they?  Hey, wait a second.  What’s that?  Holy smokes!  You’ve even got real limes for the Corona.   You’ve sprung for Corona?  Hey,  Vera Donovan ain’t got nuthin’ on you, pal.

There’s no doubt about it, you are really classy and ritzy.  The wine selection alone will be the envy of the world for years to come.   Yellow Tail is the best vintage wine on earth.  It’s very hard to find which is why it comes in the 1500ml bottles that can cost upwards of $8.99.  The Shiraz is to die for — especially last month’s vintage.  Who do you think you are — the Great Gatsby?

Then there’s the food.  Ah, the food.  Of course it’s all been carefully chosen from the finest caterer (a local pizza parlor).  The Sterno cans beneath the chaffing dishes are perfectly centered, and their blue flame flickers as twilight falls.   You can smell the Chicken Fran-Chayse simmering from a mile away.  The fish nuggets are nicely browned and thankfully you didn’t forget the baked ziti.   You’d be surprised at how many people simply cannot afford to serve baked ziti.  It’s a must-have at any swank occasion, but for some people it’s an extravagance far beyond their means. 

Then, the guests arrive in their neatly pressed Kirkland and Merona jeans.  They barely have time to talk to you as you greet them because they’re too busy looking over your head to see where the smell of Chicken Fran-Chayse is coming from.  Thankfully, your guests are cultured creatures.  Before they start gulping down the food and snapping the tongs off of plastic forks, they have the civility to crack open a beer or mix themselves a drink.  Some of them might be intimidated by the Yellow Tail Shiraz, but a few will know enough to help themselves to a generous pour.

After about thirty minutes of mingling, your party is in full swing.  People have chosen their talking partners, the baked ziti and chicken fran-chayse are getting gobbled up, and everyone is having a good time….or are they?

Within a few hours, everyone is sitting and talking.  Maybe one or two have had a bit too much to drink, but that stain will come out of your sofa.  Some people simply don’t know that the beer can holders built into the arms of your chairs and couches – from Odd Lots –  can also fit plastic cups.  Well, you can’t go around saving the world.

Gradually, something goes wrong.  People start to move around.  They seem restless or anxious.   Then they start to leave.  The party is over.   No one knows exactly when the party was supposed to end, but somehow the party comes to an end all by itself.  It’s as though you’d put a time stamp on your party.  Within twenty minutes, you’ve gone from a house full of people, to one or two stragglers who are still picking at the lest pieces of chicken fran-chayse or polishing off another Corona.   Why did they all go?  Well, after all, it is past midnight, but there was no set time to leave.  What happened?  Did you do something wrong?  No — it was nature.  Nature ended your party.  It’s not your fault.  The baked ziti was lovely.

You see, after a certain amount of food and drink, the bacteria in the human intestines starts to ferment.   This process creates gas and discomfort.  People want to go home to fart in their own car and shit in their own house.  Of course there are a few who will use your restroom — which is why you have a pineapple candle burning on the back of the toilet bowl, but a lot of people can’t handle that.  They need to fart and shit in their own houses.

I had an uncle, he’s dead now, who used to drive 90 miles each day from our summer beach house back to his own home in New York so he could shit in his own toilet.  He did this every day for the two weeks of our summer vacation.  Of course that is an extreme example, but the truth is that parties end because people eventually abandon their love of food, company and alcohol, in favor of their need to fart and shit.  It’s that simple.

Some dinner or party invitations will give specific time instructions.  For example, an invitation might read:  “Party 7pm until Midnight,” whereas others might read,  “Party 7pm until ???”   The best way to prearrange a party is to write in the invitation, “Party, 7 until you cannot hold in your farts and shit…we understand.”  It seems like the considerate thing to do, and I recommend that you do that for all your future events.