Summer parties. Love them, love them, love them. Invitations are starting to spread like small-town gossip and soon the next several weekends will be booked with celebrations that symbolize our last-gasp-useless-effort at pretending summer isn’t about to show us her backside as she leaves us for the season.
Some of my favorite words to see are as follows: Dress warm, bring a chair, bring your own beverage. Bring a tent or trailer, be prepared to leave your keys. Band, dancing, roast corn, barbecued ribs, friends, laughter. Great memories and hazy story retellings for weeks afterwards are on the house. Lanark County, you know how to party. And I can’t wait to party with you.
Let’s decipher the invitation of a well-rounded Canadian party:
Dress warm: Warm means layers. Dressing in layers is an art. You can’t have too many, or you’ll look like you’ve been retaining water for most of your life. However, you have to wear enough to be warm (thus the invitation advisory), and yet, even seemingly more impossible, you have to make sure your most awesome party outfit is somewhere in the layers. You must be able to unearth something devastatingly sexy if, by chance, it’s warmer than expected or that hot guy you saw at last year’s party decides to notice you while you’re sober this year. Smart layering is also handy when you don’t know who’s on the guest list. Nothing says prepared party guest better than being able to quickly adapt a fashionable outfit to any party crowd. Please, there are no parties where it is appropriate to show your thong strap, your muffin tops or your boxer shorts, unless you have an engraved invite from Hugh himself.
Bring a chair: Not many hosts have enough chairs for their partying masses. Bringing your own chair ensures your comfort and guarantees a place to sit. There aren’t many strangers that will just park themselves in your chair. This, of course, will change in the wee hours when nobody recognizes their own furniture anymore. By that time, you’ll likely be sharing your chairs with your new best friend, a complete stranger who has nothing in common with you but a current love of all things rum and good it all makes you feel.
Bring your own beverage, tent or trailer and be prepared to leave your keys: This is responsible partying and hosting. Lanark County has so many blessed wide open spaces that most party venues have plenty of room to set up a mini hangover village. Nothing is better than not having to worry about figuring out how you’re getting home. No tent or trailer? Choose your ride (or date) wisely and you may end up with a designated driver and a place to crash for the night. Some may even offer reasonable rates on their multiple room tents. If you get desperate, there’s always one person who falls asleep on the path to the bathroom, under the kitchen table or in the barn with the cats. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll have a cozy tent all to yourself without packing so much as a sleeping bag.
Band and dancing: Remember that hot guy you’d hoped would notice you before you went beyond that sensible point this year? Well, make sure that you are not dancing like nobody’s watching. Nothing kills a party mood faster than a geek who doesn’t know when to stop wiggling like a worm on a hot frying pan and just stand still. And it’s not okay to be a groupie. Rum makes boys in the band look Bon Jovi hot. That’s not necessarily a good thing, especially when you realize you don’t like country music. Always appoint a designated friend to make sure your keep your bra.
Friends and laughter: A natural by-product of any well-hosted party. Be warned -- there will always be someone you run into after a good party. You’ll cock your head and search your brain. A fuzzy image appears, and suddenly you see yourself, head over the garbage can while a nice stranger holds your hair. You’ll both remember this at the same moment, and both of you will turn away with equal embarrassment. As you walk away, you mutter to yourself that you can’t wait for next year’s party. Maybe that hot guy will be there again, and maybe this time he won’t have to hold your hair.
