Musical chairs

There is this practice at dinner parties whereby hosts give guests assigned seats. Why? I could never understand the need for this, even though everybody who is so-called cosmopolitan, sophisticated, worldly, well-bred, well-mannered, well-schooled and well-traveled insists it is the proper thing to do.

Still, why? Why should adults be told where to sit?

Isn’t it easier for both host and guest to let everyone sit wherever they please, leaving the latecomers to suffer their fate — small concession for a nasty habit?

I know of brides who have had mammoth pre-wedding meltdowns over reception seating arrangements. We all have seen those ginormous seating charts of G-7 caliber for formal weddings, balls and galas prepared by party planners, right? How come?

“Oh, it’s to avoid confusion and give the guests an easy time in finding their way,” a girlfriend of mine explained once. Really? We’ve seen hordes of irate guests trample receptionists at registration tables demanding a change of seat at such gatherings. We’ve heard of guests clad in couture dresses worth money that can feed any good-sized African state bartering among themselves for coveted spots where the lighting will best hit their Swarovski crystal-beaded dress at just the perfect angle. We’ve experienced being propositioned by total strangers for an exchange of seats because some want our coveted spot close to the prime rib. We’ve heard of “influential” people calling the secretaries of their hosts before the event and harassing and haranguing them for such and such table as close to the stage as possible. We’ve heard of big shots’ executive assistants negotiating a guest-of-honor place for their bosses — preferably one right next to the host. We’ve witnessed well-heeled ladies who lunch scrambling about ballrooms, switching table numbers around on the sly just so they can have one right beside the dance floor for easy access during foxtrot numbers.  

So, what part of the seating chart exactly is supposed to help avoid confusion and give everyone an easy time?

Another friend said, “You know how people have issues with other people. Every family has got those. Charts help avoid sticky situations between warring states, so to speak.”  

Really? But doesn’t a chart simply place a red flag between State X and State Y, thwarting the host’s effort to seat warring citizens at opposite corners by plainly marking the borders? I would think that jumbling them up would be the more sensible thing to do. If the effort at reconciliation proves fruitless — or even fatal — then, at the very least, it provides interesting dinner conversation for Switzerland-leaning neutral states. 

An event planner friend sighed and said, “It just make things easier.” 

“How?” I persisted.  

“It just does because Pinoys are by nature unruly. They need specific rules to tell them what to do and where to go. If there’s no sense of order whatsoever, they make karambola during the party. Believe me, I’ve seen it all. I’ve had to rescue a matrona guest dressed in a terno that was a size too small and which made her look like a suman.  Anyway, she made a mad dash for a table nearest the wedding cake and fell over one chair that she had tripped on along the way. I felt like I was pulling a stuck Winnie-the-Pooh out of that too-small hole in the tree trunk. She couldn’t plant her feet on the ground. The dress was too tight. Her legs were waving about in the air. It wasn’t pleasant for anybody — especially the onlookers.” 

“Yeah? And how does that relate to the need for a seating chart again?” I asked. “If you just let her sit where she wanted to it wouldn’t have happened.”

“Sure, sure,” she said with raised eyebrows, “without a chart one hundred women like her would race around the room like the rushing of the Pamplona bulls just to find tables.” 

She got so exasperated she called me barbaric — yes, me, and not the suman lady who attacked a chair and fell. Why? 

I don’t get the logic behind this “seating” business. This is the reason I consider intimate dinner parties of not more than a dozen people an athletic feat of sorts. The hosts, as Ms. Emily Post prescribes, always employs a “well thought-out” seating plan, which involves an alternate boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangement, with married couples or partners seated away from each other. Again: Why?

Regular people spend all day at work. Dinner invitations are supposed to be a promise of good food, relaxation and entertainment. Why would hosts want to rob guests of that and put them in awkward positions of having to chat up some acquaintance and keep him or her interested and amused for hours? It’s a big responsibility, loads of pressure. I thought such occasions were supposed to be fun. Why burden a guest with the task of amusing strangers?

I can whine until I’m blue in the face but seating arrangements are here to stay. That’s just how life is: civilized people imposing more rules on those they feed and entertain. Could this be simply another version of the concept of the power play? 

But there’s no need to despair. Chances are, once in every woman’s lifetime, she’s bound to score a seat beside a Daniel Craig look-alike with the brains of Albert Einstein, the wit of Anderson Cooper, and the wallet of Manny Pacquiao. While waiting for that golden opportunity to come, take solace in the fact that — here in the Philippines at least — midway if nor earlier during dinner parties, a sort of quiet Russian roulette happens as male and female guests play musical chairs so that like-minded individuals end up congregating — men in one big huddle, women in another. Isn’t this always the case? 

You can always tell who among the guests are dating and who have been together for 40,000 years. The “daters” stay together and make goo-goo eyes at each other all night, while the “lifers” (stuck together forever whether by choice or otherwise) separate into two groups according to gender. Here, in their respective safety bunkers, a temporary truce between the sexes is stayed as each group comes “home” and breaks bread with their comrades. Men talk about silly things such as cars, tools, business, politics, women, who’s making the most money, who’s the most corrupt, and who’s the biggest idiot in the male realm. Women talk about even sillier stuff like shoes, shoes, and more shoes. 

This is the moment when all becomes right with the world again and everyone is happy. So why waste time with seating arrangements? Arguably, it is civilization’s effort to unite men and women in order to make the world a better place. The problem is we all would really rather sit with our own kind because, at the end of the day, we have nothing in common.

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Thank you for your letters. You may reach me at cecilelilles@yahoo.com.