The Shiny Blue Envelope

As I walked in, the tea lady gave me a shiny blue envelope and asked,

"Can you give this to Mr. Abraham?"

"Sure, " I replied, taking it, and going into the bathroom.

It was an invitation to a function.
A Function I was not invited to.

This is not the first, nor I assume the last, the pathetically pretentious will spend thousands of dollars to Not invite me.

There's a very small population of 'Outsiders' here.

One would assume that no matter what the function, five or six 'extra' mouths wouldn't make a difference when one is inviting dozens of 'Insiders' to attend.

It is not the function qua function which is the key feature. It is making a small inner circle of the fatally pompous who do not invite the non-pompous.

The fact it will cost the Pompous thousands to rent a place when there is one freely available here, and the fact they will spent thousands of dollars to pay for food, when it could be done at a fifth of the price here, means nothing.

As I said, the key feature is having a function to which there is a portion of those who are Not Invited..

After sitting through the boring meeting, which was my purpose on the grounds,
I rang up Ellie Abrahams. I told him about the shiny blue envelope.
I mention I wasn't invited.

He found this a bit odd, but only a bit. He, as all those who are invited, need to attend so as to confirm how important they are. It's not the 'free meal', it is status.

Of course, one has to believe these people have status.

I am never invited.

As these people and their functions means so little to me, I don't even bother to crash. That is because I don't recognise they have status.

I didn't tell Ellie that.

I didn't tell him how just before the meeting began, two obnoxiously pretentious people went about semi-surreptitiously handing out these Shiny Blue Envelopes.

I say, semi- surreptitiously as it is kind of hard to miss a shiny blue envelope and that the handing out was done in such a manner that those who weren't invited would know they weren't invited but not to what.

On the appointed day, those of us who weren't invited to the function did not attend the meeting. There wasn't a quorum.

The meeting couldn't be held.

After the non-meeting the members who were invited drove ten miles away to have their function.

Ellie told me how, for twenty minutes, the few who had attended, delayed the meeting, searching for us.

It wasn't just the agenda of the group, the pretentious needed to see the Uninvited, needed to know that there would be an audience to their pretension.

Alas; their function would cost them thousands of dollars and not feed their egos a single cent.

I learned the importance of the non-invitation when I was fourteen years old.

There was a party given by the School Goddess. The Party would be held the penultimate week before Christmas Break.

This was to allow an entire week for those who were invited to step on those
who weren't.

Having witnessed the pain the non-invitees experienced, having gotten a bit of status this year, I decided that had to attend, even though I wasn't invited.

This was the first time, but not the last I crashed a Party.

This is because I appreciated the purpose of the Non-Invitation.

Functions are not held to honour anyone, to celebrate anything, they are given to NOT invite people.

They are given to hurt other people in a totally acceptable way.

At the time of the Shiny Blue Envelope I had developed such a dislike and scorn for those who held the function that not attending was my choice.

If not, I would have crashed.

Over the years I have crashed many functions, including weddings, when I felt my status would be damaged by my non-appearance.

However, this function, had I even been invited I would not have attended.