Beware of a Nutty Charcuterie Board
I’ll give myself credit where it’s due: this was my most creative excuse to leave a party early.
Let it be known now that no matter what I say, I hate Halloween parties. Sure, I love the idea in forcing my husband into a couples costume (Bob and Linda from Bob’s Burgers and Fred and Daphne from Scooby Doo being my favorites), but that’s about where the interest ends.
And yet, every year I find myself in the same predicament: standing anxiously in a friend of my husband’s kitchen, clutching a spiked seltzer with fidgeting hands, counting down the minutes until it is socially acceptable to make up an excuse to go home.
My husband and I are fortunate enough to have many mutual friends (and friends of friends). But even though I knew people at this party and had only ever had pleasant interactions with them, that didn’t ease the creeping social anxiety of being in an unfamiliar environment doing abnormal things like wearing a bright orange wig. Plus, it is not socially acceptable to cling to your husband the entire night at one of these things, so that also sent me into a mild state of panic.
Instead, as it seems to be with pretty much any gathering of men and women, the socially acceptable thing to do was to split the party up by gender. This, of course, would happen gradually. Women would chat around the kitchen about the different foods and decorations while the men would go to the basement to watch sports and play pool. Soon, like an unspoken rule, the women would keep with the women, and the men would keep with the men. Being at a party in your late 20s is not dissimilar to being at a party as a teenager in that way.
By perhaps the fourth polite small-talk conversation about careers (Oh my gosh, you’re a teacher? What was all that remote home-schooling stuff like? I could never be a teacher. At least you have summers off!), I was ready to go.
I hadn’t eaten dinner, and now my stomach was threatening to growl much more sinisterly than the looks of any of the costumes around me. Rookie mistake. Yes, there was food, but unfortunately, the bulk of it was a charcuterie board. I love charcuterie boards, and while this one was impressive in size, it was covered in an assortment of nuts.
“Stay away from that charcuterie board, Allie!” my friend who dressed as Shaggy, part of our group costume, had called out when we first walked in. “It’s got NUTS!”
And so the nut allergy that plagued me during elementary school birthday parties plagued me again. No cupcakes or cookies or brownies in case of a trace of nuts. Thus, I would not be touching that charcuterie board. At least, not yet.
“Come on, do a Jell-O shot with us!” Velma, final friend in our group costume, exclaimed, shoving the plastic cup of green goop into my hand.
She and the other girlfriends/wives, an assortment of Napoleon Dynamite characters and pop culture references, took their shots back in one swift motion just as I was beginning to separate mine from the walls of the cup. Part of my social anxiety at these kinds of parties was that I did not attend a lot of parties. I couldn’t even take a Jell-O shot efficiently.
Finally breaking it free of its plastic prison, the Jell-O slid its way down my throat and landed hard into my empty stomach. It was disgusting, but it was close enough to real food to almost satisfy my appetite. I had three more.
“Need another seltzer, honey?” my husband asked me placing his hand on the small of my back. He had just emerged for the first time all night from the basement where he was doing whatever it is men do at parties in basements.
“Of course!” I replied. I was finally at the point of the night, of my drunkenness, really, where I was beginning to feel comfortable. Well, almost there anyway.
He handed the seltzer to me, kissed me on the forehead, and disappeared once again. I looked back out at the other women who seemed far more put together than me and popped the tab. What could one more drink hurt?
The millennial Halloween party playlist, a staggering jump to jump from Taylor Swift to “The Monster Mash” to “Wrecking Ball,” coaxed me into doing it, I swear. Plus, I was just so hungry.
“Allie, what the heck are you doing?” Velma hissed when she approached me. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you and you’re over here risking your life?”
I looked up at her from my spot slightly slumped over the counter where I had been picking at the impressive charcuterie board like a vulture over roadkill. This girl loves some meat and cheese, and when I got past all of the potentially fatal ingredients surrounding them, it was a pretty good spread!
“I got hungry,” I replied. “Don’t worry, I’m being extra careful to stay away from the nuts!”
Velma rolled her eyes and grabbed two more Jell-O shots. I grabbed mine and took it like a champ (a stumbling one, that is). This time, it felt a little off.
It was Velma who finally asked the host of the party to get me some Benadryl since I didn’t bring any. I hadn’t been carrying any for years, much less an Epi-Pen. While having a nut allergy sucks, I was fortunate enough to have the kind that only affects me upon ingestion of the allergen.
So there I was, now on the couch in the secretive men's basement because of my semi-emergency. Was I having an allergic reaction? Was it just anxiety? I could never be sure.
Thankfully, that night did not end in a frantic trip to the emergency room. The Benadryl did the trick both for my potential allergic reaction and anxiety. Unfortunately, it did this by knocking me right out, and I will forever be remembered as Daphne, the girl who fell into a Benadryl-induced slumber at 10pm, the Halloween party raging on around me.
We went home early that night, just as I had initially hoped. I just had a nontraditional approach of getting there.
