I Ain't Got Time to Feed

Saturday evening, I was the emcee at a silent auction and fundraising banquet for the benefit of Amnion Pregnancy Center. It's a great organization that focuses not on protesting abortion, but on providing help for the young men and women who find themselves in the unenviable situation of an unplanned pregnancy.

None of which is the point of this post.

What I am led to inform you about is the crackerjack staff at the Bloomington Sheraton banquet facility. There seems to have been a competition among the staff regarding who could be most influential in getting everybody home as soon as possible.

Let's begin with the Napkin Nazi. This blond-haired, blue-eyed wonder of efficiency waited all of 5.78 seconds after I sat down before taking the napkin that had been decoratively stuffed in my coffee cup and placing it in my lap. You heard me. Placing it. In. My lap.

Next was the Salad Dressing Drill Sargent. Forget that this was a banquet for a Christian organization that wanted to give a corporate prayer of thanks before eating. Forget that not everyone had been seated yet. As soon as my napkin had found its rightful lodging place, the SDDS decided I was the most pliable person of the ten folks populating my table and offered me the distinct privilege of being the first guest to use the salad dressing boat and then send it careening around our small circle of friends. This offer came in the form of said Drill Sargent grabbing the dressing boat and shoving it into my hands: "Here...use this!"

The Table-Clearing Track Star made several appearances throughout the meal, and made the phrase "Are you done with that?" second-in-popularity only to "Can you hear me now?" I made the mistake of dabbing my mouth with my napkin and could only whimper as I watched my half-eaten dinner roll speed away toward the kitchen.

I am still bruised from when my dessert was rammed into my mouth by a high-ranking officer of the Gitterdone Gestapo.

All in all, the fundraising efforts of the evening were fairly successful. As a bonus, I heard that a few people were even allowed to chew their food before swallowing.