Dinner Party Download—Civics and Dead Chipmunks

For awhile National Public Radio ran a show called “Dinner Party Download,” in which two men discussed food and culture and music and cocktails, all the stuff you’d need to know in order to hold a successful dinner party. They often addressed dinner party etiquette, and suggested discussion topics.

Sadly, now that I consume great quantities of nonfiction, I run the risk of actually being a dinner party download. After reading so much about civics and democracy and elections, I’m obnoxiously desperate to share everything I read with everyone. 

Someone doing a dinner party download could also be called a Dinner Party Disaster. No one likes a know-it-all, but it’s hard to rein myself in. I don’t attend what you’d call ‘dinner parties,’ but when we hang out with friends, it’s the same environment.

I am constantly on the alert for openings in conversations into which I might slip an interesting fact or two. If it’s snowing outside, is that my opening to announce that snowflakes can take eighty different shapes? And here’s something that’s been burning a hole in my brain: you can fit sixty sunflower seeds into the cheek of a dead chipmunk. (Author Bernd Heinrich didn’t know how many sunflowers a chipmunk could carry, so when he came across a dead chipmunk he had to find out.) And did you know NASA didn’t clean the last Apollo spacesuit to return from the moon, so it’s in storage still covered in moon dust? How cool is that?

Seriously, knowledge can either be an awesome superpower, or the thing that makes people roll their eyes and find something else to do when you appear. One must use extreme caution and sensitivity when wielding one’s superpower, especially if one is bursting with information about either dead chipmunks or civics.