The grape incident / Sky hook

He didn’t want to be there. It was his wife’s friend’s sister’s engagement party. Or was it his wife’s friend’s husband’s sister. Or sister’s friend. Whichever. It was one of those afternoon soirees with the cheese plates and the napkins and the TV turned to some sort of radio channel that seemed to play a lot of 10,000 Maniacs songs.
With no desire to initiate conversation but with a need to keep himself looking busy he filled a small paper plate with various fruits, crackers, and dips for the third time. He had managed to snag a relatively isolated seat on a window sill when it happened.
Using a plastic fork he scooped a grape from the paper plate and lifted it to his mouth. About three quarters of the way there the grape fell from the fork, bounced off of the paper plate, and rolled underneath the nearby sofa. Hoping to mask the innocent blunder he continued to lift the fork to his mouth and proceeded to mime eating an invisible grape.
His eyes darted across the room as he chewed nothing, checking to see if anyone had noticed the faux pas. A woman standing near the kitchen counter quickly averted his gaze after their eyes briefly met. She knew. He had been had. And for the slightest of moments he panicked as his mind attempted to determine the proper course of action. Options flashed through his brain like machine gun fire.
He could excuse himself to the restroom and hang himself from the shower curtain rod.
He could walk up to his wife and kiss her hard on the lips before leaving the party and never speaking to anyone ever again.
He could retrieve the grape from under the sofa and forcibly feed it to the woman who saw him.
Like a CD with a scratch, these thoughts skipped back and forth in his head, again and again, for what seemed like an eternity but what couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds. He was on the brink of slipping into utter madness when he noticed a price tag still hanging from the woman's skirt. That simple site served as both his salvation as well as his impending doom as it jarred him back into the moment and made him acutely aware of the absurdity of life - the hilarity and desperation of it all.
His eyes welled with tears as he went back to the snack table for more mini meatballs.

zeroth life lesson: casual socialization is laborious and often more depressing than total isolation.