Amelia Lester

Can I be clear that I was extremely uncool in high school?

Do not take sartorial advice from me.

No, are you writing the name of the cheese in a little piece of chalk in a whimsical font?

You have sent me into a spiral of despair because I'm very good at mixing Negronis.

Very, very good.

Okay, I've got a solution.

The best dinner party I ever went to.

The hostess served for dessert.

She brought out some cookies and some big tubs of ice cream and she said, make your own ice cream sandwiches.

Do you think she made the cookies?

She hadn't made the cookies.

Well, except for Princess Kate when she showed up and Meghan had done exactly that.

Jessie, I think instead of bringing a dish, what you can promise is sparkling conversation.

You can middle.

Did you see that curb your enthusiasm about middling?

The most important thing that you can bring to a dinner party gathering is middle energy.

That means someone who sits in the middle of the crowd and makes sure that the conversation is always interesting and flowing.

He probably didn't even say it in a passive aggressive way.

He was like, oh, is there a problem?

There's an anecdote in there about how, again, the author's parents, she remembers that she would have to go to her dad on Saturdays and say, do you have any dry cleaning?