CHAPTER I.
MIXERS.
The time set for the party is 8 o’clock, but by 8:15 there are about twenty arrivals instead of the one hundred expected, and they are standing about stiff and formal, politely ready to do anything the program committee asks, so that they may go home feeling virtuous in having done their duty, but dangerously near the attitude of mind that will tempt them, the next time a party is announced, to follow Rebecca’s example of “letting duty go to smash!”—all this unless something happens, and that, right away!
At one time we might have met this situation by putting on a simple little game to keep those twenty guests there until the rest of the crowd came, but it was hardly necessary to make that mistake twice to realize the futility of those tactics. Any game is a flat failure that does not call forth a real social spirit and a real play spirit, but that spirit does not just happen. It must be definitely worked for and created through socializing games, while just “fill-ins till the crowd comes” can utterly ruin the prospects for creating that spirit that makes recreation, re-creation. For example, “The Gathering of the Nuts” invariably brings down the house when it is given its right place in an evening’s program, but presented at the first of the evening when guests are straggling in, one by one, and there is as yet no relaxation and group spirit, it would inevitably be a dismal failure.
Therefore, instead of putting on some casual stunt just to keep guests from leaving, or just to fill in time till the other guests arrive, we have found it far more advisable to have informal group singing around the piano for the first ten or fifteen minutes, and then begin the evening proper, even if there are only some twenty or thirty guests present, with a game that is very definitely a mixer, the one purpose of which is not so much to entertain as to “socialize,” in almost every case the mixer being some big general movement in which there is a lot of fun and nonsense just like there is in the games that follow later, but with this important difference—that every person present is in this first event in some game that pries him loose from the corner he chose on arrival as his abiding place for the evening; a game that gives him an incentive other than a sense of duty for shaking hands vigorously with his fellow guests; a game that makes him feel this party as his own personal responsibility; in short, a game which shows him that he alone counts as nothing, but that he, together with every other guest present, counts for everything.
“Spots” is a splendid example of a mixer that will so thoroughly mix up a group of guests that they never will succeed in getting sorted out again into their original classifications:
Spots.
The leader has chosen seven or eight places in the room as the “spots,” and has a list of them at hand. All of them have been carefully chosen, and she alone knows where they are. Guests are standing about informally when the announcement is made that in about two minutes a whistle will be blown, at which time the couple standing on a certain spot will receive a handsome reward. At the same time however, anyone seen standing alone will be fined. A partner is essential to winning a prize or to make one immune to a fine. Even if a person is standing on the lucky spot at the time the whistle blows, if he is alone he must pay the fine, one cent.
To promote a general moving around, and to add to the spirit of the game, lively march music is played all the time the guests are supposed to be moving, although no definite line of march is encouraged.
Two additional rules insure the success of “Spots.” After the first spot has been found and the prize awarded, the game goes on and another spot in some other part of the room is the lucky one. But no person can have the same partner he had while the first spot was being sought. The same fine of one cent is imposed on any two people who seem to think they have an option on each other.
The same thing is true of location. Anyone found standing in the same place he occupied during the first round, is fined, with much publicity.