LITTLE LOST PUPPIES

After reading my article titled COROT, my brother called and said, "You MUST tell the story of your condescending acquaintance and Waiting For Godot."

I had invited the condescending acquaintance (CA for the remainder of the article) as a guest to a dinner party. At the time, I knew her only slightly, but I knew that she had recently returned to the county; holds a PhD and was a professor before retiring. As we shared the same politics, I thought she might be an interesting person to have as a guest.

Everybody else at the dinner party knew each other and as the CA was a stranger to the group, I asked her to tell us about her career. She must have thought that nobody else was supposed to speak the remainder of the night as she monopolized the conversation and when I would deliberately steer the conversation to another topic she would interrupt and start telling another long-winded anecdote about herself.

Not ONCE during the evening did she ever try to engage another person in conversation or ask a question or make a comment about anything anybody else had said.

Because of her self-aggrandizement, I could see the discomfort of my other six guests. Finally, I asked, "Did you see Waiting For Godot on PBS?" The CA fairly screaked, "And she even pronounced it correctly." [I had pronounced Godot as "Gah-dough" rather than "Guh-dough]. A normal person would have said, "And you even pronounced it correctly", but she was seemingly oblivious to any sense of good manners. The CA probably did not notice the reaction of all the other guests. [I find that egotistical people are largely unaware of other people's feelings.] I saw my brother roll his eyes and one of my friends give me a "Can you believe that?" look and another lifted her napkin to shield a laugh.

As the hostess, I felt that I should not embarrass my guest, but I did say, "Oh, yes, I have all of Beckett's works in my library." I saw my brother lift his hand and waved it over his head (the universal "over her head" sign). The CA was obviously surprised and responded, "Right here in Fayette County!" One of the other guests asked, "Why does that surprise you?" The CA answered, "I wrote my thesis on Samuel Beckett; I'm just surprised someone in Fayette County knows Beckett."

Another guest asked, sarcastically, "Didn't you know that Sue knows everything?" I laughed and pointed to my brother and said, "If I don't know it, then he does." My brother said, "And if I don't know it, then my other brother does."

The CA obviously did not realize that she was being the object of ridicule as she then began droning on about her doctoral dissertation!

After the CA left, several other guests remained, and four told me they would never come again if they knew she were going to be there! Their assessments ranged from "arrogant", "narcissistic", "bad-mannered" to "egotistical". When I told them I didn't believe that she comprehended that she was being condescending, a friend asked, "How could she not know? Saying "She even pronounced it correctly!" and "Here in Fayette County." How could she NOT know?"

I never invited her to come back.

My brother said, "You must stop bringing home those little lost puppies; they are hard to train!"