Two stories that seem completely unrelated until you realize they both are good examples of my social ineptitude.

Last week I attended my 25th HS Class Reunion, which sounds so official that I capitalized it, but really, it was 6 people at the tavern around the corner from my house. (My high school? Not so big.) Also - because the other 30 people in my class were busy last weekend, we're having another reunion in August. Huge schools with hundreds of kids only need one, but we're special. Not special like short bus special, just special like, oh forget it.

Anyway, while I was there I was talking to someone that the last time I talked to her I was wearing two pairs of scrunchy socks, Esprit overalls, plaid Keds and a blueberry-scented Swatch Watch. She's got 4 kids, the oldest of which is 14. And female. And she home schools them, so they're always at home. When she told me this, I laughed and said, "Wow - that must be fun - having a teenaged girl in the house all the time...I'm so glad I have boys."  (This is called SMALL TALK. People do it when they have nothing real in common other than where they went to high school.) She looked at me as if I WAS STILLwearing two pairs of scrunchy socks, Esprit overalls, plaid Keds and a blueberry-scented Swatch Watch and said, "Well, I LOVE my daughters."

And that is when I went to talk to someone else.

Two days later, a friend, we'll call her Professor Barbie, because, well...she's a professor, called and told me about an unfortunate experience she'd just had with her daughter. Seems a bunch of moms and a bunch of 7 year old girls were all at a house having their Mother-Daughter Book Club, and afterwards, the homeowner's sweet labradoodle bolted out and decided that under a moving car would be a fun place to play. Sadly, very sadly, the Mother-Daughter in the moving car didn't realize the doggy did that, and the labradoodle - named Charlotte - was killed. In front of the entire Mother-Daughter Book Club.

And again, I said, "Wow - I am so glad I have sons."

Only this time I said it very very quietly, and only in my head. Because regardless of what you've heard, I do actually learn.

What I said out loud was, "And that, right there, is why I will never join a book group." 

PS - RIP Charlotte. She really was a lovely creature, even if she did have poor depth perception.