Went to a party last Saturday night.  I didn’t get laid ¹ I got in a fight ²  Uh huh.  It ain’t no big thang.

     Actually, I went Friday night.  The party was a baby-shower for The Other Sue.  I’ve got two friends named Sue.  You’ve all met Sue, but you haven’t heard about The Other Sue because she is sweet and kind and generous and all the things that Sue is…but she doesn’t generate wacky stories.   So while they may be separate and equal Sues in my own mind, I fear that for the purposes of this blog, the Sue you hear about all the time will be named “Sue” while the one who “just” acted as the glue that held our group of friends together after High School is “The Other Sue.”

     Friday, Sue, Barb and I went up to “our” cabin near Park Rapids.  It actually belongs to The Other Sue’s parents, but I think we use it at least as much as they do.

     Val and TOSue came down from Bemidji.

     The party started in earnest on Saturday, with the eating of cake and the giving of gifts, and the catching up on of news.  TOSue is hugely and conspicuously pregnant, and very happy about it.  She’s had a rough road getting here, with lots of heartbreak and difficulty, and it’s good to see her happy and healthy and well on the road to the parenthood she has wanted so much.

     After the shower portion of the festivities, Sue and Val went out in the canoe and met our neighbors, Dane and Marty.

     They were a couple of married guys up on a fishing trip.  Sue invited them to come over and share our fire.  A couple of genuine good-old-country boys, they brought some refreshments to share, and we sat around the fire.

     We stayed up later than we’d really planned, because everyone was having a great time, so as you may suspect, the old equation kicked in.

     If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the formula.  It’s not complicated on paper, but it can have extremely unpredictable results:

     ((A lifetime of personal baggage (Estrogen+Alcohol)) Fatigue)² = DRAMAⁿ   (Where “n” is a random and unpredictable number whose value is largely subjective)

     We had done a great job of averting drama all evening.  For instance, Dane was an older redneck, in his mid fifties.  He made a bombastic and vociferous statement about how “all those people coming across our borders are an invasion.  People are invading our country”, and went on to say that he wanted to mount a big gun on his truck and “go down there and mow them all down.”

     What do you say to that?  Dane is old, and he’s a blowhard (not really going to do it) and he’s not going to listen to anyone, and he’s not going to change.  There’s nothing constructive to be said, and they are, after all, TOSues’s parents neighbors.  I’m not about to stir up bad blood for someone else.  We just outlawed politics from the conversation, and Dane apologized, and we moved on.

     The problem was, we didn’t know when to call it good and cash in our chips.  We were having too much fun, watching the fire, making jokes, telling stories of our mis-spent youths (Dane had the best ones, being a biker, and having worked his way through college as a bouncer).

     Two of my friends got into an argument, though, and it escalated.  They went into the house to settle it so as to not bring the rest of the party down.  Dane started asking what the hell "so and so’s" problem was.  I said they’d work it out.  Dane declared that “So-and-so was being a bitch” and he was going to go into the cabin and “tell her so”.

     Rule number one of drama control:  Containment.

     I told Dane to let them work it out.  He said “Screw that, I’m going in there”.  Rule number two:  Trying to put out an estrogen-fueled conflict with a display of testosterone is like trying to put out a grease fire with gasoline.

     Dane started to stand up, so I stood up, looked him straight in the eye and said (In my best “authority” voice – an engaging and compelling blend of Drill Sergeant and Mom) “No, you’re really, really not going to go in there”.  Then I stared him down.  He may have been a biker and a power-lifter, and seven inches taller than me, but I had been drinking rum and was ready to GO, baby.  In the cold, sober light of day, I suspect that Dane backed down because he didn’t really feel like beating a woman half his weight into a bloody pulp…but I’d like to believe that it was my ferocious and intimidating manner.

     The two women got done with their drama, and those of us who didn’t decide to go to sleep went down to the dock to look at the stars up in the clear night sky.  We saw a few shooting stars, and lots and lots of lightning bugs (I haven’t seen that many lightning bugs since I was a little kid.  I’d begun to think they were extinct).  Dane and Marty went home, and the rest of us turned in for the night.

     All-in-all, the balance of the evening swung heavily on the side of “fun”.

     Sunday around noon, Dane and Marty came over with their hugemongous boat, and took us on a “booze cruise” of the lake.  They mixed Pina Coladas and we had another couple of hours of just plain fun and conversation.

     Then, it was time to have lunch, pack up the cars, clean up the cabin, and get on the road for home.    

(1)   Since there were only four other women, and two old married men there, and neither of the m was my husband, it’s no big shocker that I wasn’t trying I guess.

(2)   Well, almost.