Firstly, let me get something out of the way. Canadians get their panties in a bunch when cold air and Polar vortex intrusions into the USA are blamed on us. We are no more responsible for this cold air than we are for Justin Beiber.
Christmas is a time to get together with friends and reminisce about their year’s and the year to come. We gather in large and small groups, go out for dinner or Christmas parties. However it is also a time when the vagaries of aging can come into play. As we age we have issues with our sight, our ‘knees’ and our hearing. Lots of people just live with their ‘knees’ but there may be things we can do about hearing loss.
When three couples go out and the restaurant is a din of conversations, clattering and cackling the conversation will wander following the path that the person thought the other said. One type of hearing issue we have as we age is sensorineural hearing loss. The result of this is we lose our ability to hear individual conversations out of the din of noise around us. Those of us who have this hearing issue hate going to those events where there is a lot of noise. Men are accused of not listening, but most likely it is sensorineural hearing loss, we don’t care or we weren’t listening. In my case I’m in a need to want to know mode related to peripheral conversations.
One of our group took on the ‘thankless’ task of organizing our outing for dinner. One couple was very gracious and hosted us for pre-dinner drinks and nibbles. The organizer (she) made reservations at the restaurant and all was good. We arrived at the restaurant and it seems that with Christmas parties and bookings there was no place for us. (A Christmas theme since before the first Christmas) We were put in a private ‘dining’ room. (Most of you are thinking “where’s the punchline” this sounds ok so far). We were ushered into our private room. We were six, the room could easily meet the Fire Marshall’s occupancy for 60 or 70 (with dancing). One table for six set up nicely in the centre of the room.
We all sat and like good Canadians, we giggled and tried to find ways to enjoy our situation. This is where I circle back to the original ‘hearing loss’ comments from the pre-amble. One of the silver linings was we could easily hear each other in conversation. We also had to focus on each other and our own stories as any opportunity for ‘people watching’ that might lead to gossip was eliminated. The Chef was effusive with his apologies for our situation, we were accepting and fine with this unique and one off dining episode.
They brought us four plates of desert samplers. Cheese cakes, little cakes, moose mousse and other little things. Everyone was reluctant “Oh I shouldn’t” and/or “just half, you have the other half”. Well, I have 17.5 years of education and I remember that two halves equal a whole and 3 or 4 halves equal Christmas. After all the dainty halfsies and “Oh I shouldn’t” the desert plates look like the plates I occasionally put on the floor for Ozy to ‘sample’. They were shiny with the exception of a few tongue prints.
All in all it was a very nice outing with good friends. It was comfortable, relaxing and easy.