Buffet parties are more fun than sit-down meals

Disagree

1 of 2

by Sandra Lowen

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It's been a draining day, but I promised Lucy I'd convince my equally exhausted husband to meet her latest e-Harmony prospect over dinner. "Just a few friends", she says. "Please, please come".

We shower, squeeze into our spangly duds and head over to her house, nearly twenty miles away. We ring the bell and enter - to find about forty people crammed into a space that comfortably accommodates ten, each dandling slimy canapes on flimsy if decorative plates. I pass up the more dangerous foods: tomatoes, chicken, beans, nuts. Anything that can stain or roll across Lucy's beige Berber rug is just out. I totally avoid the bar. After all, I need a hand to gesticulate with, in case someone asks me about health care or Iraq or what I really think of Lucy's new beau. Longingly I eye the kitchen table, around which the guests smart enough to arrive early gather, lapping up every bit of the salmon and baked dripping-with-chocol ate thing with baked cherries in the middle. They hog the liquid refreshments.

My tongue lolls out. I put the rapidly collapsing plate on a piece of furniture that turns out to be antique and take a step toward the bar. Lucy's mother frowns at me and makes a small clicking noise with her tongue and I rapidly retrieve the plate. An ill-chosen olive pops up as if launched and loses itself in a stack of scrapbooks.

With shining eyes, Lucy flits about with her new love, introducing him to people she's not really sure she invited. He gamely follows, wondering which block he checked on his application form to wind up in buffet hell. I hug her, shake his hand heartily and mentally note that if I get to invite them over to celebrate their engagement we are going out to a restaurant. There is a small red stain on his immaculate white shirt, at which Lucy dabs as if they have been married for five years. I look for my own spouse, who has been cornered by the town flirt. He looks somewhere between annoyed and relieved to see me. It seems like a good time to bow out. We say our goodbyes and escape.

In the Subaru my husband turns to me lovingly and says, "My feet hurt. I'm tired and I think I ate two potato chips. My little sandwich fell into a stuffed chair and some woman came along and sat on it before I could get to it. You think Applebee's is still open?"

Please, please put a table under my plate. I'll eat off paper and plastic, but it needs something under it. I've never been to a buffet yet that had enough seats, and the twenty-plus pounds I've packed on over the past five years or so , well, there's nothing like standing for a couple of hours to make one look for Jenny Craig's number as soon as one gets home. Sure, a buffet allows one to invite forty or fifty people over, and prep and cleaning are certainly easier on the host. Personally, though, I love to sit in a nice upholstered dining room chair and discuss something interesting with the person sitting next to me. Alas, sit-down dinner appears to be a dying tradition.

Aside from the sheer comfort of sitting, I feel more - well, appreciated when my host actually invites 'just a few friends'. I feel he/she thought I was special enough to spend a little extra effort over, rather than that he/she felt I'd somehow be insulted if I got left off a list of people to stand around feeling uncomfortable. And who knows? Maybe I'd feel up to helping with dishes and clean-up, rather than eating the obligatory cucumber salad and retreating hastily.

Besides, most people have dining room sets that sit idly while guests cram into the living room, endangering the expensive furniture. I say liberate dining room furniture. Have a sit-down dinner today!

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