On New Year’s Eve Rachelle and I threw a dinner party for 13 friends. Instead of having each person stand-up and share a resolution for 2012, we asked that everybody write one down for someone else at the table. The idea was that we’d then jumble them all up in a hat and later read them out with the person who was most frequently able to correctly identify the resolution and to whom it was targeted, winning a $20 gift card from Tim Horton’s.
These are the resolutions:
1. Be the change you seek.
2. Stop wearing that Coldplay t-shirt in public. NOW.
3. Express yourself less.
4. Keep calm and carry on.
5. Buy your wife presents that are pretty not slutty.
6. Follow through on your dream of opening up a deep-fried salad business.
7. Let it go.
8. Capture Bigfoot.
9. Grow more bits from the dirt you make.
10. Be less spazzy.
11. Hello Sweetie, my word, you complete me. (This note was passed to the person sitting next to the author rather than into the hat at the centre of the table as requested.)
12. Build the robot already or stop fucking talking about it!
13. Get a new therapist, or maybe several new therapists.
14. Stop lying about your age. It’s embarrassing.
15. Eat slower at mealtime.
Obviously, this was a fun and kind of brilliant idea. Unfortunately, you need a group of people who are equally fun and brilliant to make it work. Sadly, nobody at dinner was fun or brilliant, and this little diversion I had thoughtfully devised for their entertainment and pleasure quickly turned into a twisted Lord of the Flies free-for- all.
It’s amazing how quickly people will turn on somebody just because they were glasses and can quickly complete on side of a Rubik’s Cube. Apparently, every written answer–save the one confused flirtation– (which actually contained a rudimentary and kind of pornographic drawing) were suggestions for me.
Utter bullshit.
I was kind of upset as not every resolution seemed constructive, in fact, many were flat-out mean. Unable to continue with the dinner party, I retreated to the bedroom where with my nephews I watched How To Train Your Dragon. It’s a touching, inspirational movie, which is why I was crying when Rachelle came in to check on us at midnight.
