PARTY HARDY
Invite to My Rager
RSVP, why don’t you?
A while back I was at a rare breakfast outing with my family. My adult sons and I were chatting about their pancakes when my husband asked an odd question out of the blue.
“Kids, in your experience, did the majority of students at college pass out drunk at parties?”
Our kids burst out laughing since we’d just been discussing whether the maple syrup was real.
“Dad, I have an opinion on that because of all the ragers I went to,” said one son.
“Yeah,” said the other son, “We raged as often as we could. The hope was that everyone passed out, not just the majority.”
All this was sarcasm, of course, as our kids aren’t the party hardies. Their idea of a wild night is playing Monopoly or the guitar. We were belly laughing, all thanks to my husband’s fluky questioning abilities.
Then I felt concerned.
I took out my phone and quickly looked up the word ‘rager’. Slang.net explained it’s a party that involves:
- A large amount of alcohol and/or drugs.
- High school or college students.
- Police showing up to shut it down.
- Wildfire-like growth once word gets out.
I stared at my phone screen and shook my head. I’d never been to a party like this. Then I immediately knew within every inch of me.
I would throw one.
For the middle-aged.
Party planning
Once we got home, I started planning Steph’s Middle-Age Rager. My first rager was happening a little late in life, but since I had better means to throw one now, it would be to the hilt.
I’d need invites, so I ordered beautiful invitation cards with elegant matching envelopes.
Catered? Of course.
I scoured reviews of local caterers. I needed a company that could handle a huge number of people — guests plus the inevitable horde of crashers. Teenagers can eat a lot of food, but you can’t imagine how much we fifty-somethings can put away.
I needed a caterer who knew lobster, proper pairings, all the chips. Snacky but deluxe. Plus Rolaids.
I began interviewing five-star companies, which was a slog. None of them wanted to cater a rager. For my last interview, I decided to call it a “soiree.” They said they’d be delighted.
Then there was the acquisition of “alcohol and/or drugs.” There are so many drugs to have to juggle nowadays — designer drugs, illegal drugs, prescription drugs, politics — I didn’t want to be bothered.
Instead, I wanted this party to be lively. I wasn’t going for pass-out fun. I was going for the party where folks pass bouncy crowd surfers over their heads. Mostly, I wanted to see Gloria, my highbrow librarian pal, float around my living room.
So, I asked a distillery to deliver vats of bourbon.
Finally, I needed to deck out my house. I hired a stager who brought in giant palm trees and a portable pool with several live swans. She and I landed on “River Rager” as my theme. We’d set up inner-tube seating for guests and serve the booze in buckets that say ‘Sent Up The River’. So fun!
Rage on
When the big night arrived, a few guests started filtering in. I thought there’d be more of a bang to the start of the party, but I knew word would spread like wildfire. Soon I’d have a house full of wild ragers. I relaxed and let the party grow on its own.
That was a poor decision on my part. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy the folks who showed up, but by mid-evening, the only ragers present were me and six friends. As for the actual “raging,” two were in the dining room playing double solitaire. Two were watching The Office reruns. The rest of us were sipping chamomile tea laced with dribbles of the booze, while gently stroking the swans to sleep on our laps.
I got up and started pacing. How were the cops ever going to show up to such a limp event? A small panic started to well inside me. This was my worst nightmare. My rager had become a soiree!
I had to pump things up, stat.
I went over to Gloria who was passed out on an inner tube. “Gloria!” I shook her by the shoulder. “Gloria!” She wouldn’t come to.
“What’s wrong with Gloria?” I asked the others.
“She’s out for the night. She took her sleeping pills and said not to move her. She’ll sleep on the innertube.”
“But it’s only 8 p.m.!”
“Right,” said Frank, her husband. “Way past her bedtime.”
Oh no. My ragers were already going to bed. I had to think quickly before the others started tucking themselves in on my furniture. I was not running a hostel here. I was hosting an out-of-control party!
I tried to recruit my friends to pass me around on top of their hands, but they’d gravitated to the kitchen where they were listening to our friend Carl, a chef.
“The proper way to extract meat from a lobster begins with the tail,” said Carl, “Like this.” The chef had his head bent over one of the cooked lobsters from the giant pot on my stove. My friends were focused intently on the meat extraction. This was not a rager vibe.
“Hey,” I chimed in, lifting a dripping live lobster from the aquarium my caterer had hauled in. “Anyone want to have a chicken fight and use these as our weapons?”
My friends started to laugh. Memories of our youth and chicken fights of yesteryear filled the air. The mood suddenly shifted.
“C’mere, Bonnie,” I said, “grab this fellow and hop on my back.” I held out the grasping lobster. “Frank, you want to load up Cheryl?”
Fun times
The group started to come alive. Bonnie hopped on my back. My legs nearly gave out — I’m not the stalwart chicken fighter of my youth — but I steadied myself and we stood our ground in my living room.
My six friends were starting to pick up the decibel level a bit. Even if it wasn’t the throng I was hoping for, maybe our intrusive sound would spur a visit from the cops and launch my party into history.
Soon, Bonnie and Cheryl were waving their poor, frantic lobsters at each other. Frank and I were wobbling in desperation. My old running legs were giving me anything they had left in them. Frank’s much older soccer legs couldn’t recall what they had left in them.
When Cheryl leaned way over in a quest for victory, his legs called it quits. The two of them fell over like an old tree in a storm. There was a massive crash into my end table. My lamp shattered to pieces.
Two words. Rager vibe.
I don’t want to sound like I was happy about Frank cracking his tibia. That was terribly unfortunate. Truly. However, when the ambulance arrived, and the cops pulled up too, do I have to spell out what I felt when I heard the knock on my door?
I opened the door with a butler’s flair. I escorted them to the scene of the lobster-chicken fight. Then I went into the kitchen and picked up my tea.
I sipped and watched my party disgracefully wind itself down. It was true that my rager never hit the high bar of ‘pandemonium’. However, this was a legitimate racket. If not bedlam, then definitely a fuss. A solid effort for a house that had only ever hosted a soiree.
As they wheeled Frank out of my house, I stroked his hand with kindness and reassurance. I promised to drive Gloria home.
I walked back into my living room and collapsed into an innertube next to Gloria, who was still snoring. I leaned my head back onto the rubber donut and whispered to the ceiling with uncontrollable pride, “Fabulous rager, Steph.”
If you’d like to be invited to my next party, click here to find out more about me. For my next party, please oh please, don’t arrive sleepy.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou, T. Kent Jones, for your generosity in editing this story. Discussing this with you was the real shindig.
For fun, funny, and funnier, click on this fire here.
