March Showers

Punch Drunk at a Singles Party

Mar 31, 2026

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newspaper Column (March 31, 1977)

They brought it all in baskets and they came by night. They tapped on the window, scaring me right out of a telephone conversation. They opened the door and hollered, “Surprise!”

Three old friends, they were. And out of their baskets came fancy crabmeat sandwiches, potato chips, pickles, cheesecake, china plates and silverware, a candelabra, champagne for them and sparkling Catawba for the teetotaling almost-bride. A shower! A party! In my honor!

Having now used up all the exclamation marks I intended to use in the next six months, I will try to control my excitement and keep calm. But it won’t be easy. Bridal showers just don’t take place too many times in one’s life. The last and only other time I was guest of honor was twenty years ago. So now, tonight, I am showered for the second time in two days. Yesterday, an afternoon tea party with gifts and punch and giggles and dainty cucumber sandwiches and jellied salads and nuts and nibbles. How nice to be a bride-to-be.

The few days that remain before rings are swapped, the bouquet tossed and my singlehood becomes passé leave me very little time indeed to tell another story about another party. I will talk fast.

I had thought, when singularity came over me and a reasonable amount of time had passed enabling me to adjust to it, that being a woman, single, in Maine, was not all that bad. I thought I had been doing rather well taking the proverbial one day at a time, noticing things on my own, saying hello to myself in the mirror when I got lonesome, and in general faring not too badly in the independence department.

Then I get this funny invitation from a good friend to go to a singles party with him. It was funny because—correct me if I’m wrong—the idea of a singles party is to go unattached and meet people. Women meet men, men meet women, stuff like that. And me, I get asked to go to this party as somebody’s date. Really it was much worse than funny. The mere mention of singles parties makes me want to cringe. I try to decline. You wouldn’t catch me at one of those icky parties, I protest. That is simply not my idea of a fun way to spend an evening, no matter how single you are, I sneer. Singles parties are dumb, I scoff.

I go to the singles party anyway. After all, I say to my single self, if I am ever to write a definitive book about being a single woman in Maine, this would be a very important chapter for which I may need vast amounts of reference. Furthermore, my date reminds me, we’ll have each other. I find this vaguely reassuring even if it does violate the unwritten singles party rule of arriving unspoken for.

Well. In no time at all I am vindicated. It is a dumb party. Instead of asking questions and recording the answers in the notebook I forgot to bring, I ask myself a question: If I am so capable and independent, what am I doing at a singles party?

Even the food is dull. Somebody turns the lights down before I even get a chance to locate someone at least interesting enough to talk to. Look, if I’m dredging up background material for my book, I’m not going to talk to a toad, am I? My itinerant date, circulating through the crowd according to previously arranged ground rules, waves occasionally from across the room, apparently reminding me we still have each other.

Long before the agreed-upon termination time, he is at my side, ready to leave. “I have come to the conclusion,” he announces grandly, “that there are only two women here worth talking to, and one of them is you.” Frankly, the other woman didn’t impress me at all.

The worst part of that whole evening was the fact that on my way home from our halfway meeting point, my speedometer passed the historic 100,000-mile mark and I didn’t even notice it. Don’t ever talk me into another singles party.

Karyl’s Headnotes

Surprise showers and the happy occasion they precede are much more to my liking. And the food is so good at these ladylike shindigs. Here’s a super-duper, super-easy punch for whatever celebrations spring may bring.
And let the word go out that the guy from the singles party is soon to be married, too, but not to me. May his bride-to-be be as thrilled as this one. Exclamation point.

Teetotaler’s Punch

1 large can frozen lemonade and the water required
1 large can frozen orange juice*, ditto
1 quart cranberry juice
1 46-oz. can pineapple juice
1 quart ginger ale
1 quart of tea made with 3 teabags

Mix, chill, serve.

*Minute Maid is discontinuing all its frozen juice cans in the U.S. and Canada by April 2026 due to low demand; you may still find a store-brand alternative if you’re committed to keeping the vintage vibe. Or just use the equivalent of fresh juice.

PRINT THE RECIPE!

Amie’s Endnotes

I wasn’t quite twelve years old when my mom went to that singles party, hadn’t yet become the second runaway of the family, and have no clue on the identity of the mystery date but I remember that night, my first without a babysitter, feeling grown-up and terrified all at once as I watched Starsky & Hutch on our little black-and-white TV in the living room, where a year later, she would exchange vows with her new husband, Bob. We’d have the reception there, too! Another party! With food! For friends and family! Now I’ve exceeded my exclamation point allotment but stay tuned: our next issue will cover the wedding. Exclamation point.

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Two weeks ago, we said goodbye to Cook & Tell KP Team Member Kimber, who never met a pan or a bowl she didn’t like. I’m pretty sure she’s found a celestial kitchen to keep tidy. May she enjoy every last lick.

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