Cranium Party, the Third

So out of the 26 peo­ple I invit­ed to the third Cranium Party, 9 said they could­n’t make it, 13 said they’d come, and 4 did­n’t RSVP at all.

Out of the 13 peo­ple who said they’d come, only 3 of them showed up, and one of those was Jessica, who was sort of co-host­ing this one with me, so fuck yeah she was there1.

That means that includ­ing me, we had four peo­ple, which is the bare min­i­mum to play Cranium.

To say I was dis­ap­point­ed is an under­state­ment. I spent a great deal of time and ener­gy mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, and clean­ing the house so my guests could be com­fort­able. Not to men­tion all the food I bought, most of which went bad because there weren’t enough peo­ple to eat it (and espe­cial­ly when the guests who do show up also bring plen­ty of snacks).

We did end up play­ing a good game, but it was entire­ly not worth all the prepa­ra­tion.

Jessica offered to host the next one at her place — very nice of her because that real­ly means she’s offer­ing to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­i­ties — but I feel like Cranium par­ties are my thing. An invi­ta­tion is not only an invi­ta­tion to play, it’s an invi­ta­tion into my social cir­cle. The guest list is tight­ly con­trolled; any­one on it is either a very close friend, or some­one I can tell has the poten­tial to be. I want to have all the respon­si­bil­i­ty, because it’s one of the ways I can show these peo­ple they’re impor­tant to me.

At the same time, some peo­ple are already ask­ing about the next one2, which I find strange because the impres­sion I get is that it’s a low pri­or­i­ty, nev­er some­thing peo­ple put in their sched­ule and plan around. I’m pret­ty sure most only go if noth­ing else comes up on that day.

That’s fine by me — not every­one loves doing bad impres­sions of Christopher Walken as much as I do — but when peo­ple say they’re going to be there and don’t show up, it’s a com­plete deval­u­a­tion of my efforts. I’m seri­ous­ly ques­tion­ing if I’m going to host anoth­er Cranium par­ty any time soon. If I do, the next invite list will undoubt­ed­ly be much short­er.

At the very least, the day was sal­vaged with some bub­ble tea, Chinese food, and qual­i­ty time with Jessica.

  1. She’s also the only per­son to make it to all Cranium par­ties up to now. []
  2. I pur­pose­ly don’t make them a reg­u­lar thing because I want them to be spe­cial. []

6 comments

  1. Yeah, that sucks.

    Seems pret­ty com­mon. Planning lit­er­ary events there’s no way to know if you’ll get 4 or 40. It’s some plas­ma stream of uni­verse inter­fer­ing or some­thing.

    It’s dif­fer­ent if it’s a per­son­al par­ty for peo­ple involved but even then I fig­ure peo­ple all try to do more than they can do and get stretched to thin. The spir­it is will­ing and the body takes a nap. If pressed for a yes or no, a per­son picks one arbi­trar­i­ly.

    Last gath­er­ing I had was just 3 peo­ple but the one before that was ambi­tious and for every no or maybe or no answer I got, I invit­ed some­one else. Except some who said def­i­nite­ly no, came. Some who said maybe came, and some did­n’t and some who were def­i­nite yes, did­n’t show. (shrug) Peoples. They’re strange. it’s noth­ing per­son­al.

  2. I would have loved to come if I was­n’t still recu­per­at­ing!

  3. This sort of rsvp’ing is heart­break­ing. Recently my broth­er threw a sum­mer par­ty at his house. 30 peo­ple rsvp. 20 of them where my boyfriend and I’s friends (which are friends with him too), 0 showed up from my broth­er’s only side. He was heart­bro­ken. It was real­ly frus­trat­ing and sad to see.

    I think peo­ple should just not con­firm to go, if they aren’t plan­ning on mak­ing it. Point finale.

  4. Awww I feel so guilty now. :( Although I lit­er­al­ly slept through it I know that is no con­so­la­tion when you are expect­ing me to show up and school every­one on cra­ni­um play­ing.

    • I was­n’t try­ing to sin­gle any­one out, I just thought it was real­ly sad that so many did­n’t show. I read on your twit­ter stream that you also slept through the Sloan con­cert (which I’m guess­ing would be way more impor­tant to you than a Cranium par­ty), so exhaus­tion is def­i­nite­ly a valid rea­son.

      • Actually I was MORE look­ing for­ward to the cra­ni­um par­ty because I can lis­ten to Sloan songs any­time and no one ever wants to play Cranium with me!

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