Last year, my company has its Christmas party (and there was no pretense toward a "holiday" party, even here in the New South) between the blessed day and New Year's. I was, quite literally, the only person in the company who worked that night.

Not only that, but our building at the time consisted of a main floor and a mezzanine. I got to work above the folks while I heard and watched all these people get snockered during a "wine tasting event."

Only recently I learned of the scandal this party was. Apparently, at the first party (my company is young), "real nice" Goretex jackets were handed out along with a Christmas bonus. Last year, no bonus and no jackets. Just a wine tasting that probably entertained about five of the fifty people in attendance (though round after round of wine does have its benefits).

I did get to spend about fifteen minutes on the main floor, appropriating dinner (but no wine). I had wondered why the folks I knew seemed somewhat less than cheery. Now I know.

This year, my company has properly rechristened the occasion as a "holiday party" and has set the date for "sometime in the new year." Let's just say this sounds even less propitious than the wine tasting event.

My wife's company had its party tonight. It was held in a children's museum in downtown Raleigh. The specter of overgrown kids getting mildly giddy on beer and wine and then attacking exhibits built for actual kids is one that cannot be overstated. It was weird. At times it seemed like the kids were telling the grownups to act right.

Actually, the whole event seemed out of place, if well-intentioned. As the average age of someone working at this company has plummeted to the low 30s, the number of employees with young kids has risen rapidly. This has led to low attendance and short stays at recent parties (so I've been told). Parents dealing with babysitters, you know.

So the company got smart and scheduled the party for a place where kids were not only tolerated but utterly welcomed. A good idea. Then the missteps followed.

First, the food was arranged on thematic tables. Pita, hummus, olive and feta on one. A range of baked cheese products on another. Sushi and other cold Asian dishes on another.

This is not kid food. I was an adventurous eater as a child, and even so I would not have ventured to fully half of the tables. It's not surprising that the table that emptied quickest contained dessert.

So the kids were high on sugar and the adults high on wine and beer. Everyone was jovial and pleasant, but perhaps a bit too enthusiastic. I found myself cranking the water well exhibit a bit too hard, yelling at the thing when water did not properly flow. Maybe it was turned off. Maybe not. But I know that the four- or five-year-old staring at me wasn't worried about what lay behind the plexiglas. He wanted to know why I was acting so, well, childish.

I was high on wine and wandering around a children's museum! Easy answer, kid. Of course, he's not going to understand for another 10 years or so, and even then he'll think of things like that as geeky. It'll probably be 20 years before he'll be able to reconcile alcohol and children's museums.

Ah, well. I've got one more chance, at my company's holiday get-together. A chance for... well, I don't know. Because even as I wonder about the sanity of the folks who arranged tonight's event, I've gotta say, there is something about being half-looped while bumbling though a hands-on museum. My long-lost sense of wonder returned for a little bit. At least until the water well exhibit didn't work.

I don't want to take this too far, but it seems to me that the buzz returns a person to a simpler mindstate, one where sensation can easily overwhelm reason. Maybe, indeed, that party in the museum was a good ideer after all.

Jon Worley does not advocate the use of psychotropic drugs while perusing the works in the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Fla. The paintings have enough psychoactivity in and of themselves.