Casual Wear Casualty

Tiffany was never so shocked and embarrassed in her entire life when she arrived at a celebration that had been put together at the mansion of the Bank President and his wife in honor of Writing.com's being around for eleven whole years! She secretly wished that she had stayed home writing poetry.

Considering the circumstances, who could blame her!?!

It was the craziest birthday party ever. It wasn't just a little bit crazy. It was downright insane--and even "insane" was inadequate to describe what she found upon her arrival.

The invitation had said that it would be a very casual party and that all of the guests should arrive wearing party hats; therefore, she did--along with a Writing.com t-shirt, a well-worn pair of jeans, and her most comfortable sneakers.

She practically peed herself when she was greeted at the front door by the host, because he was wearing nothing but a party hat. His wife, in similar attire, joined him there and looked Tiffany up and down. Then, with her lips pursed and her nose in the air, she accused Tiffany of being overdressed.

The Bank President, however, was a little bit more understanding than his wife and told her to come on in and make herself at home.

She tried to, but it was a little difficult for her to do so when surrounded by over 1000 people who were wearing nothing but party hats.

Even the dog was wearing a party hat.

It turned out that the two of them would become best friends at that party, because he, too, was overdressed. His tuxedo was definitely out of place.

"That's one of the downfalls of being a Boston Terrier," he told Tiffany. "That and this..." At that point, he passed some very potent gas--something that he'd be doing a lot of throughout the evening.

It was all that Tiffany could do to keep from throwing up due to a combination of nerves from being so inappropriately dressed at this party and the thick cloud of poisonous gas enveloping her in its green grip.

Since the cute, little critter producing it had been so sweet to her, she resisted the urge to move away from him, because doing so would, very likely, hurt his feelings and permanently do major damage to his self-esteem.

As you might imagine, she was quite relieved when the time to open the presents arrived, because that would mean that this bizarre party would be ending and she could finally go home, take a shower, and try to forget all about how she had spent this evening.

Eating a carton of ice cream in the privacy of her own home in the wee hours of the morning would be an excellent means of helping her to forget--though, in the case of this bizarre party, it might take at least two or three cartons!

Tiffany had looked forward to meeting The Storyfamily and hoped that they would be at this party--that is, she had hoped so until she had arrived and knew that they would have been mortified had they shown up.

She would later learn that they actually had shown up but had left about 30 seconds later saying that they had just remembered that it was too close to the children's bedtime to hang around any longer.

Someone speculated that this wasn't really true--that they had just felt embarrassed about arriving inappropriately-dressed.

Another person said that she believed that they were telling the truth, as they were covering their children's eyes with their hands--probably, to make it dark so that they would be asleep by the time that they had returned to the hotel where they were staying.

The Bank President's wife announced that, since The Storyfamily had to leave early, there would have to be a proxy person to open their gifts. Still wearing a haughty expression, she motioned Tiffany to come stand beside the table by daintily wiggling her pointer finger.

There were eleven wrapped packages on the table. Everybody was staring at Tiffany as she began to open them one-by-one.

The first package contained the word "DONT" and the next one contained the word "WORRY"

When all of the packages had been opened, there were eleven words (one to a package) that formed a run-on, shouting sentence with absolutely no punctuation:

DONT WORRY YOUR PRETTY HEAD TIFFANY DEAR YOU ARE ONLY DREAMING

At that point, she woke up and realized that she had fallen asleep at her desk and only had a couple of hours to get ready for the actual party over at the Bank President's mansion.

She chalked the dream up to being stressed over trying to decide what she would wear to the party. She was thankful to have had the dream, as it helped her to sort everything out and get a handle on what would be appropriate to wear. You see, Tiffany believed that unusual dreams had the purpose of guiding the dreamer in making important life decisions.

*******************************

The front page of the local newspaper had an interesting headline the next morning about how Tiffany had been arrested for public indecency when she had shown up at the WDC Birthday Bash wearing nothing but a party hat. The explanation she had given to the police when they questioned her was that she didn't want to make a fool of herself by showing up there overdressed.

Word Count: 899