The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The organization that maintains all the county parks and most of the state park trails on the island occasionally holds a potluck get-together. Since I take care of the only South End park, the one they don’t bother listing and the county doesn’t either, I get an invitation. A few years back I went to one of these, made a dish to share and hauled up to the Senior Center with about a hundred other volunteers. After waiting for the buffet line to clear I loaded up a plate with whatever was left and proceeded to sit down. Tables seated about 6 folks and so I looked for one with a vacant seat.

Maybe you were a popular kid in high school, one who sat with your popular pals at the formica table and refused seating privileges to the geeks and the nerds and the losers not in your group. I was not in your group. My family moved about 20 times before I graduated high school so I was forever the new kid on the outside looking in. You learn a lot being the new kid, trust me, and one lesson is that humans love their cliques. They love being exclusionary. And they don’t mind hurting others’ feelings. In fact, they really enjoy it.

The other lesson you learn is growing comfortable being on the outside. Okay by me then and okay by me now. As I went from table to table at our little potluck, each and every one told me that their vacant seat was taken. Not by anyone left in the buffet line obviously where I was last, but just that they needed that chair empty. Imagine yourself going table to table, one after the other, plate in your hand and repeatedly being told that empty chair was taken. I suppose you might take it personal. I suppose you might even feel shunned. I suppose you might even be reminded of those good old high school days.

I took it personal, I felt shunned and I definitely was reminded of my high school days, 50 years past that adolescent bullshit. After the last table with a vacant spot informed me someone might already have that space, I took my plate and walked outside to eat alone. When I’d gotten about halfway through the potato salad, macaroni mash and Costco whatevers, I got up, walked back inside and tossed the rest in the garbage bin, went back and grabbed my quinoa salad and hightailed it to the door and outside to my truck.

Needless to say I don’t go to their potlucks anymore. I can eat alone without making the drive and I don’t have to share my dinner with jerks. And no, I don’t go to my high school reunions either, in case you were wondering.