And now a couple of times I was arguably a bad host.
First, we're not kid people. We don't like kids. Even when they're well-behaved, we just don't care for them. No biggie, some people don't like cats.
As such, we've always had a no-kids rule at our house. We've backslid a few times, but have generally done a good job enforcing it.
When we moved back to Ohio, nearer my family, after nearly 20 years away, we threw a big family cookout, and since it was mainly an outdoor event, we relaxed our no-kids rule.
Mistake.
One kid, about five or six, chose to pee outside in my front yard and then walk around outside butt naked, all in full view of my neighbors, and this just after we'd moved in and trying to make a good impression.
Also, I caught another kid sticking his finger and hands directly into the food and eating from his hands, sampling everything that way, going from the potato salad to the jello to the snack chips that way, getting goop every which way.
That led to my bad-hosting bit:
We hosted our one and only Christmas party, and we firmly told everyone no kids, evening party, drinking and carousing on the schedule, and no one would be available to watch their kids.
One family member, the mom of Baby Godiva The Nude Pee'r, told me she'd be bringing her kid anyway..."We can just put him in the back with his computer game, he'll be fine."
We emphasized again, no kids, that's totally not acceptable.
What'd she do? Show up with her kid, and even joked, "Well, you can't do anything about it now!"
The hell we couldn't. We threw her out!
The second bad hosting on my part was at the same party. Someone brought us a case of the cheapest of cheap beer, and I didn't mean it to sound so brutal, but I'd already had some mulled wine and very good beer, so I sweetly explained that "you should just keep that for yourselves, thanks anyway, because really, you don't think we'd drink that, do you?"