A Night Out on the Town With the Raggedys

Tonight was one of those rare nights at the Raggedys that called for a babysitter. Close family friends were making a vort (engagement party) for their son and future daughter-in-law in a nearby shul's hall.

Now, I could tell you about the frenzy involved in getting ready and getting the kids off to bed in time for them to be asleep for the babysitter. Let's just say that there were several false alarms for Ann going to sleep involving needing to drink and needing to use the bathroom . . . hmm . . .correllation, perhaps? That about 20 minutes before the babysitter was due to arrive, I checked on Ann who gave me a big smile from her bed? That I called the babysitter and asked her to postpone her arrival by 20 more minutes? Note: The original babysitter was sick and sent us her sister, so I wasn't eager to introduce the kids to someone brand new on a late night.

I could also tell you about figuring out what to wear (actually, I will, later in this post). However, in the spirit of the type of blogging I admire most, the self-deprecating kind, I will instead regale you with the Thought that gripped me and my husband. Namely: Do you think there'll be sushi at the vort??

Don't get me wrong - we've been to many, many beautiful simchas of all kinds and by no means do we measure them against this standard. However, because of the nature and location of this vort, we had strong reason to suspect that sushi would be featured. I know that most people who live in the civilized world are totally over sushi, but I still can't get over the fact that it's sushi and I'm eating it.

In fact, once we arrived, we were not disappointed. A very respectable array of sushi did indeed await us at the vort. After talking excitedly to the baalei simcha for a few moments, RaggedyDad and I got to work. Since we did not know anyone but the hosts, we wasted little or no time mingling. We went straight into stealth sushi-machine mode. Yes, there were plenty of salads of the pasta, leafy, or bean persuasions there to distract us from our goal. There were even some marinated mushrooms, of all things. And of course, the dizzying selection of desserts. But the Raggedys remained undeterred. For us, it was all about the sushi.

After eating enough sushi to either make us sick or meet the equivalent of twice our babysitting costs, we attempted to catch up with the "boy's parents" once again. To be fair, there were quite a few people also demanding the attention of our family friends. What choice did we have but to swoop down for yet another brief and final round of sushi? Luckily, after that, we had a chance to talk to the baalei simcha once again and we inwardly reminded ourselves that there was a reason we came to the vort having nothing to do with raw fish, rice, and soy sauce.

In the final analysis, RaggedyDad and I were able to point out several key mistakes in our strategy.

1. The clothing we wore was unintentionally conspicuous. RaggedyDad was one of just about, oh, no other men who was not wearing a suit and tie. My clothes were equally wrong, since they weren't lacy enough, tight enough, or high-heeled enough. Also, the color of my top was a little bright to be subtle about our sushi-fress-fest.

Of course, as RaggedyDad so thoughtfully put it, "It's not that you're out of fashion. But you're not exactly in fashion, either." Thanks, RaggedyDad. Time is quickly running out for you to excuse these types of remarks as the innocent ramblings of a foreigner. Suffice it to say that I've been wearing the same things to these events for about a decade. Before which I was in high school.

2. We continually returned to the same sushi area, and then returned to the same seats. If anyone was watching, it was very noticeably exactly what it looked like. A young, married couple eating as much sushi as they possibly could in 45 minutes.

3. We travelled to and from the table as a team. Tag-teaming would have been more suave and undetectable. Poor RaggedyDad - trying to be undetectable while working the room with a redhead is a lost cause.

I'm sure there were several other critical errors we made, but, er - the point of this thing wasn't actually the sushi. Right?

When all is said and done, however, all the sushi in the world doesn't amount to coming home to the kids snoring in stereo in their room, and the scent of their shampooed heads while they sleep.