Post #158067 by mrs. pineapple on Wed, May 11, 2005 3:54 PM

ok - I will admit this... when I started dating mr. pineapple-bot, I wasn't into tiki at all. I had a friend at work who was into it, so I knew vaguely what it was about. When Mr. Bot told me of his 'interest' in tiki, I mentioned I had a friend, Otto, that was 'sort of into tiki' (hahahah, still cracks me up!)

Anyway - I've always enjoyed a fine cocktail, but I'm actually a little shy about meeting new folks, especially ones I think I don't have anything in common with, and since I wasn't that into tiki, I thought I would have nothing to talk to these people about.

I will say that one of the stupidest and worst fights we ever had was before the first tiki crawl we were supposed to go on. It's a little intimidating, you feel like a dork because you don't have any cool aloha wear, don't know the difference between a Moai and a Maori (or if you're even spelling it right) and I didn't realize that pretty much no one cared, or was judging me. Everything I said seemed to me like the chick in Spinal Tap, who thought the record should have mixed in Doubly :wink:

After 4 years of going to the Oasis and other events, I feel really comfortable hanging out, and I've made lots of friends. You kind of have to ease your S/O into stuff that you're really into. I actually know a little about tikis, and I've allowed my house to be slowly swallowed by them. The thing that really won me over was the people, but it took some time before I felt like I could jump into the conversation and not embarrass myself! The thing about the tiki central people, is they have lots of interests outside of tiki, music, art, red meat, etc. You can tell from the lively discussions on the Beyond and Bilge forums, that most of the people who are active, have a wide variety of interests, and they are generally good people. I think if you ease the wifey into it, and try to find some other wives or girlfriends who are dipping a toe in, they can roll their eyes together and talk about shoes, or Brad Pitt or whatever, and you can just keep bringing the mai tais, and buy her a really cute piece of jewelry from Purple Jade!

[ Edited by: mrs. pineapple on 2005-05-11 15:56 ]

[ Edited by: mrs. pineapple on 2005-05-11 16:13 ]