wildflower

The company Christmas party.

Four words that send a shiver down the spine of the most hardened veteran of universally awkward affairs.

Nothing good can ever come from an office Christmas party and often times absolutely wonderful things happen anyway.

Case in point; last year’s Christmas party.

The one-two punch of drinking and karaoke is a sure formula for regret, and this party did nothing to disprove this hypothesis. What seemed like an endless stream of lemmings who couldn’t carry a tune if given a bucket lined up to hurl themselves into the abyss courtesy of a song of their choosing. The musical equivalent of asking the condemned whether they’d prefer a firing squad or the guillotine. Same result.

Then I saw her standing in that same line and my heart did a flip.

I say flip because I wasn’t quite sure how I felt. Was it dread? Was it elation?

Eventually it was her turn and I saw asking for a number of songs they didn’t have available. “No Ani DeFranco here I’m afraid” I heard the master of ceremonies, Bob from accounting, say to her. Same went with boygenius. “Boy who?” in fact.

The audience was getting restless as were the lemmings waiting their turn behind her. That’s when I saw it.

She was scared.

And not having a go-to song wasn’t helping.

I heard her ask if they had anything from Tom Petty with the same look on her face that Ralphie was sporting in A Christmas Story when he finally asked Santa for a football.

It was then I realized something. I realized that if she sang American Girl I would fall to pieces.

She didn’t. She went with Wildflowers. A wonderful song that anyone can sing. A safe call. Right?

And yet I saw in her eyes that she already knew that when she woke up tomorrow she would wish she hadn’t. Hadn’t been talked into singing. Hadn’t been talked into standing in front of everyone in the company and singing. Afraid she might not ever live it down.

And yet she stepped forward and began singing anyway.

Like a bird.

All around me people continued to talk and all I wanted to do was tell them all to shut the fuck up. When a waitressed approached me to inquire if I needed anything I almost punched her in the mouth.

She was singing.

She was singing.

When she was done I had to lower my eyes because if she had seen me looking at her and made eye contact she would have known everything.

Every damn thing.

Like I’ve said many times, Christmas parties are a dangerous thing.