Some couple of years ago, we were inadvertently invited to a party.

An afternoon lawn event with an obscene amount of food and mobs of the legitimately invited, we did in fact know a sizable swath of people there.

The inadvertency? Apparently the hostess had asked a friend about a couple she wanted to invite, but didn’t know, and the response to her description resulted in us. I can’t remember how we eventually discovered we weren’t the intended, and I won’t ask the irritable Stephen again.

One of the known guests at the party was lovely Page O. You are obliged to take it on faith that in both appearance and demeanor she is a complete tonic. Chatting with her, she introduced me to a gentleman nearby who had recently relocated from New York City.

I can typically be counted on to trot out my must-be-a-culture-shock opener when I’m introduced to someone ‘from abroad’, whether it’s moving here from a large metropolis, or another country. In this case, it produced an engaging back and forth.

Interrupted mid-sentence by another partygoer, when that person lurched away, this fellow said to me, ‘You were saying…’

Shocking as this overtly courteous display was, I believe I was able to collect myself, and parting, he said he looked forward to our running across each other again, he imagined, unaware hubby and I were all but common party crashers…