cylinder misfire

I'm not mad at anyone in particular. It's like if someone gets trampled to death in a crowd stampede. Which pair of feet gets charged with murder? I don't know. My guess is it would be ruled an accident. such can be said of my belated weekend birthday soiree. A friend offered to coordinate it for me, so I gave him a list of people to invite. I didn't want him to have to make too many calls, so i capped the list at 50, trying to eliminate those most likely not to show up.

As it were, I opted to let him handle everything and resisted the desire to intervene and control things. Something went wrong though. Some cylinder misfired, because no one on that list except for my friend who coordinated, his wife, and another couple they brought showed up. I don't necessarily consider it a failure because I had a raucously good time, laughing it up over pizza and cheesecake until well after midnight.

Still I had to reconcile what went wrong. In trying to understand what went down, I polled some people and apparently, there were plenty factors. They hadn't received the e-mail invitations. A few people received calls. Those who got the invitations had previous engagements, obligation to work, or otherwise couldn't make it. I'm notorious for never allowing enough time to plan a party, and always delegating that task to someone else because I'm just not good at it. My friend had a master plan to have the party function as a live version of The Amazing Race. He was pretty disappointed that he didn't get to implement his brilliant idea. I for one was interested in it. Seeing as I've never watched the television show, I thought it'd be fun to be introduced to the premise in real life first.

A little exception to the rule. There were a few people who said they would be there, and just straight up flaked. If I was gonna pin the murder wrap on anyone, it would be them. No-shows who didn't know are excused. No-shows who knew and couldn't make it but notified are excused. All others are to be fined, jailed, and will not be permitted to pass "Go" or collect $200.

That's the inner child in me with his bottom lip poked out demanding vengeance. I don't actually plan to hold any ill towards anyone for failing to re-arrange their schedules around a poorly planned event. But this is a good reminder that friends are made of people, and people is a notoriously unreliable material to build anything on.

My bad. The charges are dropped. All detainees may go free.