One of my roommates decided that she wanted us to host a 4th of July bbq at our house. It sounded like it might be kind of fun, so we decided to make it happen. The bbq invitation was sent out with a request to please rsvp, and based on those numbers we were banking on about 40 people. The bbq was going to start at 7. We were competing with another bbq two streets over that started an hour earlier, but we were hearing rumors that word about ours was circulating about.
At first a few of our invited guests trickled in and things looked like they were going okay, and then suddenly, in a matter of minutes a massive crowd of Mormons descended on our home, and they were still coming. They filled our patio, kitchen, dining room, living room, and spilled out onto the sidewalk out in front of the house. Half of them were obviously Mormon, but we'd never laid eyes on these people. We didn't know the girl we caught digging through our fridge, or the guys who stood out on the patio and harrassed our grillers to get their burger cooked faster. There were quite literally hundreds of people at our home, and after I got shoved out of the way by a few of these strange guests on their way to the food table, I sought refuge plastered against a wall in the dining room, just staring. My roommates both looked to be just as shocked as I was. Not necessarily by the number of people who showed up, but more by their behavior. You'd think these people had never seen food before. They cleaned us out.
We kicked them out so we could go to the fireworks at the beach. This literally involved hunting through the house and telling the guests that we found throughout the house to clear out. Just when I thought the last of them had left one would appear heading upstairs to the bedrooms, or emerging from a corner of the living room, or coming back in to use our bathroom. I was beginning to think they were never leaving, and the kicker was that the people that wouldn't leave were complete strangers, our friends cleared out in a timely fashion.
At the fireworks people kept telling us what a great bbq that was, and the food was amazing. The food was good, but amazing??? Again, you'd think these people had been fasting for a week. I guess they were so eager to consume all the food that they completely forgot their manners. We came home to a completely trashed home. I had to go out and clean trash out of the bushes, and off the sidewalk in front of the house, out of the living room, off the stairs, I noticed a minute ago that there is still more trash in some bushes out on the patio that we missed. I'll go get it tomorrow. Our kitchen carpet may never be the same. We're probably going to have to get it cleaned, and these people were STRANGERS. I haven't seen anything quite like it since the parties Jen Coulam used to throw on 17th street. I think we've decided that we will not be hosting 4th of July bbq's in the future. The girls with the competing bbq a couple of streets over reported similar wreckage at their home, only for some reason the crowds vacated their bbq to migrate to ours before all their food was gone, so at least they had leftovers...
All in all, we had to admit at the end that it was kind of fun, but next time we'll avoid doing this over a major holiday when there are hoards of the rude out-of-towners here.
1 comment:
Single Mormons, especially in herds, are amazingly rude and slobbish. It is SOOOOOO ANNOYING!!! I sometimes wish I could get a refund on the HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS I spent feeding ill-mannered men and 18-year-old girls who couldn't be bothered to throw napkins away in a conveniently placed trash can, but would instead wad them up and put them on our bookshelves or shove them between our couch cushions. On the other hand there were some great stories that went along with those gatherings (remember the DPRDP?)
I do think the white elephant we instituted for the Christmas party was brilliant in that it kept most of the randoms at bay. Unfortunately, it's hard to think of a 4th of July equivalent.
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