See this guy? I am now about to unload on him, which I feel especially confident in doing because I think there's only one person aside from myself who reads this blog. (Hi, Jenni!)
Last night the Hus and I went to Seabrook's annual "soup supper," which was highly touted as one of the premier social events of the year (which says an awful lot about Seabrook's social scene, really.) It's sort of a higher-end potluck dinner in which the participants are asked to bring a crockpot full of their best soup, and/or a dessert, and everyone gets to sample lots of different things and share companionship. When I say everyone brings a crockpot, here's what I mean:
If there should be some sort of national crockpot shortage crisis, the invading forces should make directly for Seabrook Island, South Carolina. Those in this picture are but a smidgen of all the crockpots - not to mention the crackpots, as will be discussed further below - at this event.
Before you get too judgmental about this event and condemn it to the ranks of Utterly Stupid Shit I Would Never Attend Even if my Life Depended On It, take a look at the scenery from the front porch of the beach club, where the dinner was held:
Yeah, pretty darn nice. Anyway, we went, armed with a crockpot full of chili, a homemade hot milk cake, and optimistic attitudes about meeting some new people.
There were hundreds of people at this event. Literally, hundreds of people bearing crockpots and/or desserts. And let me say right up front: both the zillions of soups, and the zillions of desserts, were fantastic. People brought their A games for sure.
In fact, desserts are so good that they have to impose restrictions on when you can start hitting them up:
(People largely abided by that rule.)
Like everything else in Seabrook, this event was a well-oiled machine with a very structured system for dropping food off at the door, where it was met by a crew of volunteers who transported it inside the venue and set it up:
And they had the grooviest little 4-well plates so that everyone could sample four soups of their choice:
It really was a well-run event. However...
Of course we knew literally not a single soul in the room aside from each other. So we knew going in that it could prove challenging socially. Not long after getting inside we began to notice that many of the large tables had "reserved" signs on them, so we began picking our way through the room trying to find a table where we would be allowed to sit. It wasn't easily done, and as we wended our way through the room lots of people were eyeing us with suspicion. Perhaps this was due to the fact that our name tags literally bore our names, and an asterisk. The asterisk designated us at "outsiders" or "non-members." Or, as I came to think of it, the asterisked name tags were sort of a less pernicious (much less pernicious) version of a yellow star or a pink triangle. Our name tags marked us as "other."
Finally we found a table without a reserved sign and with empty chairs, and we grabbed two of the chairs and stood behind them, smiles pasted on our optimistic faces. (Did we look enough like we were saying "Please talk to us"?) But in short order I noticed a couple of people standing nearby who were growing increasingly agitated, their whispers more fervent, their heads together as they gesticulated and spoke animatedly to each other, while casting nasty looks in our direction. Eventually, the guy depicted at the top of this posting told us we had to leave, because he had "saved" the seats we were claiming. "Um," I said. "There was no one here when we got here, nobody at this table at all, and no reserved sign on it." His reply was, "Well, there was literally no one sitting here, but we had reserved these seats." I suppose he had done that with his brain waves, and I suppose we could have refused to move, and I am more than 100 per cent certain that he was too old and feeble to pick my carcass up and move it, and I am sure my former Marine husband could have stood his ground and ensured that we would remain where we were, but it wasn't worth it, especially in a community which we are contemplating joining (or maybe not, after last night), so..we moved.
All's well that ends well. We landed at a table with some actually super nice people who were much more our own ages, and we had a really fun evening after all. But there is no question about it: here on Seabrook, there is a very definite Them and Us mentality. Interestingly, our tablemates last night were busting on Kiawah, our neighbor island just up the road, for being snooty and clique-y, so I'm not sure the Seabrookers have looked in a mirror recently. Just another thing to think about when we think about whether we want to move here.
(That's the Evildoer in the orange sweater, again. The lady he's speaking to was one of the Highly Agitated Ones who wanted us to move.)
In our neighborhood at home, we live in ancient houses with rich traditions, among people who are super-wealthy (and some who are not so super-wealthy), and nobody tries to be exclusionary, and nobody looks down upon people who are new to the neighborhood. In fact, everyone is very live-and-let-live in Roland Park, and happy to welcome newcomers. I am liking my hometown all the more, having experienced an evening where people wanted to pull up the drawbridge and not let us in.
