Hermit Crab

I am such a hermit. If I had my way, I'd probably stay home 90% of the time. Recently though, Benjamin's friend's parents reached out to us, and invited us to join their table for "Trivia Night." Apparently it's an annual fundraising thing the PTA organizes, and apparently it's HUGE in St. Louis. All the schools do them. I felt like it was probably a good opportunity to get to know some of the other parents better, so I said yes.

And then anxiety set in. The night before the event, I had the most stressful dream I can remember having in a long time. It involved a maze-like mansion, suffocating crowds of people, being single again (where was Paul?!), a pool party full of other singles- but I'd forgotten my swimsuit, me carrying around my tiny mixed-race baby (again, why wasn't Paul involved?!), then watching my baby die of heart failure at that awkward pool party. Dreams are weird.

I had to remind myself that this Trivia Night was not a big deal, and when all was said and done, it really wasn't. And bonus- I had my favorite date by my side the whole night (Paul, in case you were wondering). These Trivia Nights are funny, and not quite what we were expecting. The tables competed in some trivia, but that was certainly not the focus of the evening. There was lots of auctioning for hundreds and even thousands of dollars worth of things, lots of alcohol, and a lot of 80's attire.  We were lame, and didn't dress up, but we saw everything from Prom dresses to Letterman jackets, and from scrunchies and leggings to a really questionably dressed Tina Turner. I was glad I had thought to bring our favorite "fancy" drink so we didn't have to keep running to the drinking fountain!

I still question the fundraising efforts of schools here. After seeing how much money people drop for random stuff in support of a "good cause," I wonder if it wouldn't have been better spent for a sister school or something. In this girl's humble opinion, our school has way too much at their disposal.

I'm also reminded that people are good. It's so easy to generalize and stereotype people who you feel are different from you, but when you really try to get to know people one-on-one, you can't help but feel some love for them. The only problem with an event like this one is, you only come away knowing about 1% of "those people." And the rest were in no way redeemed in my mind. ;)