Quote Un Quote Parties

My neighbor, one of my best friends, coerced and all but forcibly made me come to her house tonight for one of those "parties" where another woman tries to sell you something. I won't say what it was for fear of incriminating the innocent, but I am not afraid to say this: aren't these "parties" the ultimate in suburban wife bullshit?

I hate them more than I do baby showers and bridal showers. I hate them more than air kisses with women who don't know me yet squeal with gushing fondness when they see me at cocktail parties. I hate them more than I hate women like that.

Only because another neighbor offered up her 11 year old daughter to babysit for an hour or so, I went. I didn't buy anything. I admit I heckled the seller. I was not supportive; I rolled my eyes. I feel guilty about it now.

That poor girl, she was just trying to make an extra buck (and get me to sign up to shill this crap to my friends so she could make more bucks... But I digress.) I mean, we're all together, enjoying a cocktail and some crudite, just, you know, CHATTING, and why shouldn't we, why wouldn't we, SHOP?

I love shopping. I love bargains. I love the feeling of unpacking my finds at home and congratulating myself for covering all the bases: dish soap, a new centerpiece, underwear. What I don't like are these shopping parties: I guess I prefer to do my spending in private.

It's really more than that. These gatherings make me feel like my network (the official term), my posse (my term) is being infiltrated and tainted, and worst of all, used. I conjure up meetings in corporate headquarters that go something like this: "Yes! Con the lonely suburban ladies into thinking it's a night out and gosh darn it! They'll buy, buy, buy!"

So I resist. I don't need these goods (no matter how cute they may be) to get together with friends. We do fine by ourselves. God knows, we don't need alchohol to buy stuff.

I am in a nasty mood -- maybe because I had to come home early from the "party" (I hate that) -- or maybe because the teenage rebel in me snears at the grown-up me and says straight to my aging face, "You must be kidding." But who am I to kid? Truth be told, that hour (and 15 minutes) I spent there tonight was actually, well, mildy fun. I wanted to stay longer. I could have done without the balloon blowing up and popping contest (which I won), but clever women exist everywhere. And they were there tonight too: the woman married 35 years who loves the loud chaos of my kids as they scramble across her yard, the woman with the big job I never knew she had, the friend, who like me, is suffering the side effects of a loved one with cancer.

We women, we have our ways. We sneak around the selling. We interrupt the seller: we find our ways to connect.

And the woman, that mom, moving her product? She made a killing tonight.