Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Embassy Christmas Party

For me, one Christmas party runs right into the next in my mind and none of them are really memorable. There was one party, however, that I will never forget. I was dating a girl named Holly that winter, and her dad worked at the French embassy. He got invited to the embassy Christmas party, which meant Holly got invited, which means - you guessed it - I got invited.

Yes, I wore a tuxedo to that Christmas party. The one and only time in my life I plan to do that; Christmas parties should be relaxed and informal, as far as I'm concerned.

Holly was coming down with a cold so she probably shouldn't have gone to the party, but she was determined. She told me it was because she couldn't wait to see me in a "monkey suit." Ha ha.

So she tucked two fistfuls of cough drops into her dress, and we headed for the party, which was held on board the ambassador's yacht. Ritzy, I tell you.

The evening went well, although the party guests were a bit out of my league, class-wise. Holly and I mostly stayed to ourselves. The real disaster hit when Holly's dad decided to introduce us to the French ambassador.

I bowed politely, and poor Holly, who had never learned the niceties of a curtsy, also tried to bow. Unfortunately, between the rocking of the yacht in the water, and Holly's slight indisposition, she lost her balance, and stumbled against the ambassador.

That wasn't the worst of it.

In the process, two fistfuls of cough drops burst forth and scattered all over the deck of the yacht. Those crazy embassy guards - they're just itching for an opportunity to spring into action. Later they insisted they thought Holly was trying to assassinate the ambassador, and the cough drops were some sort of miniature hand grenades or something.

The next thing I knew, five embassy guards had pulled their semi-automatic weapons and were relentlessly firing upon the wayward cough drops until they were nothing but mentholated mush on the deck of the yacht.

Now that was memorable. They even wrote a song about that party. They did. It's true. The song starts out like this: "Deck the Halls with bows of Holly..."

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