Progressive Dinner Parties: ruining neighborhoods all over America

Last week on top chef -my favorite of all favorite shows-they had to cater a progressive dinner party. For those of you who aren’t as familiar with this new social trend, it’s a type of dinner party where each course is served at a different persons home. For example, the appetizers are served at my home, and then we walk down the road to Lisa’s house for the entrée course, and after we go to Bradley’s for dessert. While watching, I couldn’t help but think how interesting and different this idea seemed; it splits up the cooking and cleanup and adds a little exercise between courses. But then I really thought about how stupid the idea really is. So I want to plan a dinner party, but I can only invite my neighbors, no one else? What if I don’t necessarily get along with all my neighbors? For example, My father attempts to make peace with everyone but George across the street dislikes Don next door; maybe it’s because Don steals trash cans then plays it off like that trash can with your house number on it is actually his or something like that. So now your not inviting all the neighbors that you dislike for walking their dog on your lawn, or whatever the issue. And then during the ingenious progressive dinner party, the left out neighbors are watching this spectacle of all the popular “kids” walking from house to house laughing and discussing which dish was their favorite, basically plotting how to key your car without getting caught. This progressive dinner party is just another way to continue the childish behaviors we all learned in high school, and to further discriminate against people for no reason. To me, it sounds like a fight waiting to happen on an episode of the Real Housewives. If you want to have a dinner party, then take the entire responsibility, clean your house from top to bottom, shop for days, spend money you don’t have on caviar just to impress your guests, dirty every pan in your house and when everyone leaves, sware that you’ll never do it again. But don’t decide that you only want to contribute the cheese platter or the cake –which by the way we all know you bought from the bakery up the street. Invite friends that you haven’t seen in a while or don’t see often; make the dinner party worthwhile, especially if its so taxing that you really never do it again. Don’t invite the people that you’re forced to see everyday when you’re walking to your car. Progressive dinner parties are not progressive; it’s a potluck dinner party with some walking involved. If you want to have a potluck dinner party then have it at one home and call it that, don’t make up a fancy name and think your special enough to include some people and leave some out. And if you think a Progressive dinner party is something you’d like to host, maybe you should talk to a therapist about why you feel the need to still be the popular kid in your adult years.