Ernst the man This is the story of an.. incident... that happened one year at my company Christmas dinner dance.

→[More:]A few years back I had a co-worker named "Belinda". Belinda was then about 37, attractive, and personable. Although she would do some rather odd things sometimes and could also be very stubborn. If we disagreed about something she would just keep repeating the exact same assertion despite my offering varying arguments backed by evidence to the contrary. But always in a very pleasant way, so I would be more bemused by her reaction than anything.

Belinda was engaged to a man named Ernst. I'd met Ernst at the dinner dance the previous year to this incident. He was in his late sixties, short, rotund, and jovial. I hadn't interacted much with him at that first dinner, noticing only that he brought nutcracker dolls to play with at the dinner table and that he seemed to adore Belinda. The age disparity was remarkable (Belinda was indignant that they often got mistaken for father and daughter), but I thought, oh well, they seem happy together so that's all that matters.

Belinda did tell me that her parents (with whom she lived) were dead set against the match and had forbidden her to invite Ernst to the house. She was terribly upset about this. I thought it odd. Surely if the only objection to Ernst were his age they would accept it...?

Anyway, there we all were at the second dinner to which Belinda had brought her Ernst. At the cocktail hour Ernst proceeded to tell everyone how sexy Belinda was. Okay, fine, that's kind of cute. It wasn't so cute when he started slapping her on the butt and groping her in front of all her co-workers. Belinda didn't seem to mind, but everyone else who saw was trying hard to politely not react.

We went into the dining room to have dinner. Belinda had brought two of her friends with her to the dinner dance. It was rather odd of her to do this. Sure, we at my company enjoy the dinner dance because we all know each other, and we bring along partners/dates who don't enjoy it as much but will do it for our sakes. But to bring friends with no connection to our company? Whom she had to pay for? She could have taken them out to a nice dinner for much less.

But whatever. I sat next to the couple at dinner and enjoyed talking to them. (Let's call them Jack and Jill.) They were very pleasant, nice people, and much more interesting than the person on my left hand, a certain George, who was husband of a co-worker and a very friendly and good-natured but very boring man who could do nothing but complain about his mundane job.

Jack and Jill told us how when Jill wanted to become a teacher and couldn't get into teacher's college in Canada, they had moved with their two young children to Australia for a year so Jill could go to school then. Jack would take care of the kids during the day while Jill went to school and then go out and work a four to midnight shift at whatever jobs he could get when she came home. He'd been a night stockboy at a grocery store, for instance.

I said to Jack, "And all four of you were able to get by on the income from those kinds of jobs?"

Jack said, "Well, we had to use some of our savings, but it wasn't too bad."

Ernst said something none of us caught, so Jill, Jack and I all leaned forward and said, "Pardon?"

Ernst said, "You couldn't afford to buy condoms, ha? CONDOMS? HA HA!"

Jack and Jill were completely unprepared for this comment on their sex life and both stared at that boor with identical looks of shock and speechlessness (i.e., mouths hanging open, eyes wide, eyebrows raised to their respective hairlines).

I turned to Jack and said in my best garden party manner, "And how was the climate in Australia?"

Jack tried gamely to answer me, but he had a stunned look on his face and he kept interrupting himself with gasps of appalled laughter.

Belinda meanwhile did not seem to think this was a problem at all, just laughed and kept talking to the person next to her.

I decided then and there I was NOT sitting at Belinda's table ever again. She'd roped me in the last two years but that was it for me.

Later during dinner Enrst looked across the table at me and said, "Someone at this table is pretty cute, huh? ROWWWRRRR."

I turned to George and asked him about his damn job.

And Belinda wonders why her parents can't stand Ernst.

Belinda got fired the next month so I never heard if she and Ernst ever got married or what. I did hear, however, that she never told her parents she got fired, simply continued to leave the house as per her usual work schedule and go to the library or friends' house for several months until she found another job.

These days, in terms of problematic co-worker partners at my company's dinner dance, we have a certain "Jude", who is a very unattractive man in his sixties who insists on giving "friendly" warm close hugs and kisses to a number of the women at the close of the evening. I've noted that he does not bestow such friendliness on the men nor on the older or less attractive women. He tried it on me and I firmly offered him my hand to shake. He proceeded to kiss and slobber all over it. Ewwww.