{"id":1054,"date":"2017-11-12T08:10:59","date_gmt":"2017-11-12T16:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2017-11-13T14:40:25","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T22:40:25","slug":"cage-match-moment-red-dress-gala","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=1054","title":{"rendered":"My Cage Match Moment at the Red Dress Gala"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I approached the octagon at my daughter\u2019s sorority fundraising gala, it was an especially uncomfortable moment.\u00a0 The fact that my opponent was a middle-aged woman wearing an evening gown made this especially so.<\/p>\n

Let me explain.<\/p>\n

My daughter is a freshman at Oregon State University – home of the Beavers.\u00a0 Motto:\u00a0 \u201cDam Right I\u2019m a Beaver!\u201d\u00a0 Also, \u201cWe don\u2019t give a dam!\u201d\u00a0 And so forth, and so on, with the \u201cdam\u201d comments.\u00a0 Anyway, she recently pledged a sorority, which for the purposes of this column, I will refer to as \u201cAlpha Phi,\u201d because the name of the sorority is Alpha Phi.\u00a0 (Side note, the \u201cPhi\u201d is not pronounced \u201cfi,\u201d as in \u201cpie,\u201d as you might expect by employing rules of normal English, but rather, \u201cfee.\u201d\u00a0 So it\u2019s \u201cAlpha-Fee.\u201d\u00a0 Yeah<\/em>, it\u2019s irritating.)<\/p>\n

One of the first sorority events of the year is the Red Dress Gala.\u00a0 All the girls wear bright red dresses.\u00a0 The event unceremoniously begins with all the girls attacking the buffet station like the marines hitting the beach at Normandy.\u00a0 This is followed by the \u201cguests\u201d (code for dutiful parents) wandering up to see whether the girls have carelessly missed a crumb or two among the buffet tables.\u00a0 Answer: No.\u00a0 (These girls were as thorough as Hoover vacuums.)\u00a0 Now, while some may take my very true description of this event as criticism, please note that anyone familiar with the circumference of my belly, will understand that I owe these girls a debt of gratitude.\u00a0 That, plus they were kind enough to begin serving alcohol at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the cage fight.<\/p>\n

The gala included a silent auction.\u00a0 Mostly themed baskets.\u00a0 But among them were three bidding sheets for a private parking spot next to the sorority.\u00a0 One for each school term \u2013 fall, winter and spring.\u00a0 The sorority has very little parking, so this parking space is a coveted auction item.\u00a0 I wrote down a bid on fall and spring, but winter was already getting pretty steep, and my cheapskate DNA prevented me from initially placing a bid.\u00a0 After walking away, however, and reflecting on my many, and well known, failings as a father, I ventured back and wrote down a bid.\u00a0 This is when I noticed a woman, not so subtly, standing guard next to it.\u00a0 She immediately swooped in (actually, she just leaned over \u2013 she was practically standing on it), and wrote down a greater bid.\u00a0 Then she looked up at me and announced that she had been the FIRST person to bid on the item.<\/p>\n

I walked away, and figured I\u2019d swing back later when the countdown began.<\/p>\n

At the three-minute warning, I walked back over.\u00a0 Standing at the bidding station was the same woman.\u00a0 Only she was now holding the bidding sheet for the winter term parking spot.\u00a0 She had apparently decided that her last bid would, de facto, be the final and winning bid.\u00a0 I smiled and reached over to take hold of the edge of the paper.\u00a0 She hung on and flashed me that look that Hillary gets when someone mentions Monica.\u00a0 I gave the sheet a slight tug, and she finally released it.\u00a0 I wrote down my new bid, and not surprisingly, she immediately snatched the paper back and wrote another bid.\u00a0 A final thirty second announcement came across the speaker, and I considered, but only for a moment whether I wanted to find out how she would react if I were writing down the top bid when time was announced.\u00a0 This is when I decided to employ one of my life philosophies: \u201cWhen you encounter an insane person, don\u2019t walk away, run<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 I turned and got the H-E-double toothpicks out of there.\u00a0 I may someday enter the octagon, but not this day, and not with this crazy lady.\u00a0 Frankly, I think I made a dam<\/em><\/strong> good decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I approached the octagon at my daughter\u2019s sorority fundraising gala, it was an especially uncomfortable moment.\u00a0 The fact that my opponent was a middle-aged woman wearing an evening gown made this especially so. Let me explain. My daughter is a freshman at Oregon State University – home of the Beavers.\u00a0 Motto:\u00a0 \u201cDam Right I\u2019m […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[635,639,636,638,637],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-college-humor","tag-fundraising-humor","tag-parenting-humor","tag-silent-auction","tag-sorority-gala"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}