When I was young, like say, 6, it was impossible to have a friend over. I had to call them and talk to them, and then talk to their mother, and their mother had to talk to my mother, and my mother had to talk to their mother, and their mother's mother, etc. Homeland Security would have been proud of our protocol. I suppose that's understandable when you're that young, maybe, i don't know. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through, especially because the other kids in the neighborhood never seemed to have this problem with their own families. During my teenage years, my unpopularity sorted of prevented that from being a problem, fortunately. Also, my mother kept the house messy, and didn't want any one to see it. She blamed my father, but today, 26 years after he moved out, it's still a mess.
My grandparents seemed to have the right idea; they didn't mind if people just dropped by whenever they wanted, without even calling. I always said to myself, if I ever have a place of my own, this will be my policy. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of friends or a big family in the first place, and nobody who lives conveniently close.
Anyway, I've been working at the same place for eight years, and living in the same place for seven. In that seven years, I've had four visitors. One is my friend who makes "annual" visits when our football team is playing a big game. And about 2 years ago three family members dropped by. But tonight, my boss is having some people from work over to her house for a holiday party. Since she lives near me, I have suggested to certain selected coworkers that if anyone wishes to continue the festivities, they can come over to my place afterwards. So this will be the first time I've had coworkers over to my place for a social event. It's not going to be anything formal, probably just sitting around talking and drinking.
Even though I'm not an extremely social person, I look forward to people visiting me. These are people I feel reasonably comfortable with, and in my job I'm not expected to have great social skills anyway. Also, if someone visits me, I feel like I'm socializing more on my own terms, as opposed to something dictated by social "norms" or someone else's expectations of how people should live. And if someone wants to criticize how I live, or what kind of host I am, it'll be more likely to be fair and informed criticism, based on something I'm actually doing rather than some stereotype. Also, some of the potential visitors are single females, so I'm sort of looking forward to receiving some constructive criticism about my apartment. I plan on playing the "clueless bachelor" angle here in order to encourage helpful pointers. People may be too tired to come over later on, and it might not happen, but at the very least I'll have a reasonably clean apartment, which isn't always the case.
