Tuesday, 06 January 2004 | Knees

New Year's Eve, at around 11:30, I had a necktie wrapped around my head like a blindfold, and I was playing an odd game in which I had to determine who everyone at the party was by feeling their knees. There were about 10 people there, and only three of them I'd met outside of that hour, so keeping names straight with faces was enough trouble, let alone keeping names straight with knees. (Plus, of course, they'd all switched seats after I'd been blinded). As I went around the room feeling soft, round cat-friendly knees, and bony, skeletal mountain-peak knees, I was worried that I'd call a girl by a guy's name, or vice versa. Knees can be deceiving, you know.

I don't actually know how I did; I am the only one who played, and the scoring system was totally arbitrary. "Three hundred and eighty-three points for Lisa! Lisa, what team are you on? Okay, 383 points for Team 1!" People congratulated me.

Afterward, I threw on my coat to make it to the next party down the street before midnight, but not before the room insisted on granting an early countdown. Numbers were everywhere—they started at a minute, went directly to 20, and then, somewhere in the teens, skipped to the final ten. It was better that way, somehow.