Spaghetti Night

Seeing my old buddy Mike the other night reminded me of an adventure we undertook... with very mixed results. Back in high school (around 1985 here), we were convinced that we were vastly more intelligent and cultured than just about anyone else... period. We'd sit around his house and listen to The Style Council, knowing all of the neo-socialist words and we'd drive around looking for coffee shops that nobody knew about (this was before coffee shops were ubiquitous).

We decided that we were do sophisticated, we had the ability to literally BLOW SOMEONES MIND. We crafted a plan: We'd invite someone over... someone who we had reason to believe was not as cool and cultured as we were... and we would wow them with our utter sophistication.

So the plan was hatched: We'd invite Greta over, have spaghetti (mom had a great sauce recipe), listen to the Colourfield, Everything but the Girl, and The Style Council, and get into discussions that were sure to raise her conservative hackles, at which point, our cleverness would somehow show her a thing or two. Greta was a popular girl from a different school.

The only problem was that we took a good week concocting this plan, and when it came time to execute it, we failed utterly. See, Greta turned out to be pretty smart, and charming, and liked that music too, and hated Reagan too, and instead of a battle of the wits, we wound up having a pretty pleasant afternoon. And she went off into her evening, and we just sat there and realized that maybe just maybe that really wasn't such a good plan. In fact, the entire idea was patently ridiculous, and that for all of our talk, we really just wanted to spend some time with Greta who was very cute. And we did perhaps learn that maybe people were a bit more than they seemed sometimes.

And we did enjoy the spaghetti, because THAT part of the plan was foolproof.