The Un-Vitation

The other day we got a thick white invitation type note in our mailbox. It was from the owner of our building and it said the following:

This Saturday I will be hosting a dinner party in apartment 5A.
The festivities begin at 8 pm. I kindly ask your forgiveness
in advance for any disturbance or inconvenience this may cause.

Then, below the barely legible signature, he added this line : This is not an invitation. Well, if it wasn’t an invitation, what the heck was it? I called my French friend Sabine to ask her why someone would send us an UN-vitation. “He had to send you that,” she explained, “or else it would be considered rude.” I then had to explain to her that where I come from it is considered rude to send an invitation to your neighbors telling them you are having a party and that they are NOT invited. We have since discovered that proper Parisian etiquette dictates that you invite your neighbors to all your loud parties. The theory being that if they attend the party (if only for a short while) they can’t really call you up later to complain about the noise. Very shrewd I’ll admit. But this jerk didn’t even follow the correct procedure. He wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Or I should say have his party and enjoy it, too. Luckily, things didn't get too out of hand, although the fete did go on for EIGHT hours.