As far as setup goes, I need not say much more, except that my Mormon aunt and uncle were sweet enough to offer me a full turkey spread at their friends' house, and I spent the night prior to T-day drinking wine until 2:30 in the morning, putting me in a next-day social haze and further adding to an already awkward situation. In other words, I was a little slow when I shook hands with 27 strangers and tried to explain what I do for a living (freelance writer for a dying paper; long-term grad student; income scrounger) and why I'm moving to NY in a month (No, I don't have a job lined up or a place to live). Although I can usually find common ground with most people, my state at the time, coupled with excessive stuffing and spoonfuls of green bean casserole, made it a little challenging to animatedly explain my existence to a room full of parents, grandparents and charitable folk who give 10 percent of their income to God.
However, in the end, I think I pulled off a fair amount of sociability, and they were none the wiser about my subtle hangover. (The fact that they may have no understanding of such a concept also helps. However, I did give one woman my business card, so she could be reading this right now and busting me.) And yet I didn't necessarily pull off not being a general douchebag.
On the drive home, my uncle made the comment that it was interesting to see me talking to so-and-so, a very nice woman dressed in J Crew, who's about the same age as I am. "It's weird because she has three kids, a house and a family," he said. I joked how she's "so adult" compared to me, to which my aunt innocently replied, "Well, Jessica, some of us are just late bloomers."
I was too dazed to come up with snarky retort.
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