It’s no secret that, like my parents, I’m a fucking alien. Last weekend, while we were on our wine country getaway with the other couple, there were definitely a few very distinct moments when my comments/actions received confused and incredulous looks.

First, I should say that the other couple are big time oenophiles. They read wine books, host wine tasting parties (that they play seriously), are wine club members, watch wine movies, etc. You get my drift. They are serious about that shit. So, since I just had to show up, I had no inkling as to the collection and/or caliber of alcohol that was being brought. Our first night there, Bubbey grilled a Costco tri-tip, and his friend J cracked open the alcohol. Well, you know me: Bubbey and I live on a shared glass/plate system (to minimize dishwashing and water consumption), so we’re not huge on like individual serving sets. So we start off with the champagne in flutes. His friend poured and served into individual flutes. The champagne tasted pretty dang good, better than what I’ve had before but I couldn’t exactly say better how. Turns out, it was some fancy aged champagne where the bubbles are super fine. Ok, great. I enjoyed it. Next up was the red wine. Well, after I drank my glass of champagne, I just poured the red wine into my champagne flute, even though there was a new red wine glass set out on the kitchen island. The dude watched me and just kind of stared in disbelief (or judgement). Then he walked over and said, the red really needs to be enjoyed from a red wine glass. I thought to myself: ok sure, whatever. In my head though, I was thinking: does the vessel really matter? He started telling Bubs about the red wine… it sounds like a fancy wine. Just out of curiosity (and bc I’m always collecting data and price points), I asked how much the bottle was. I was totally expecting like $75 or something. Like still high to me but you know, not beyond the realm of expectation. Nope. Try over $200!

Given my strong history with charm school and etiquette (NOT!), leave it to me to drive the Porsche as if it were a Geo Metro, know what I mean? What can I say: classy all the way through.

So incidents like this kind of happened throughout the weekend. Am I just too plain folk? Or perhaps I just prefer to flip the middle finger to social graces? I dunno. To be honest, there has always been a part of me that has rolled my eyes at the stuffiness of etiquette, even the formality of plating and placement of utensils . I mean, I’m sure I have my own set of behaviors where I judge people as being discourteous or rude. But I’m just not totally clear on where I stand on politeness and manners. Clearly, the caliber of food/drink last weekend was way high for me. After all, I’m pretty happy with wine in the box. Or maybe I’m just not THAT food/wine driven??? When we host parties, we like to serve food that we make, but do I want to be the kind of people who snub their noses at guests who bring over Safeway soda or Sunny Delite or Lucerne ice cream? No. That kind of snobbery really rubs me the wrong way. I’m trying to dig deeper on this to determine why the whole scenario bugs me. Is it a class thing? An elitism thing? A pretension thing? Not sure. But I had a strange mix of feelings, like I was churlish and unsophisticated. And yet, I didn’t really care to fall in line with the norm. Defiant once again. Even in the most unsuspecting of circumstances.