With Friends Like These
For my entire corporate career (ha, career) I always had more women friends than men. Not sure why, but that’s the way it always was. During my last job, I had a group of friends that I saw every day. Apparently, that wasn’t enough, because we also got together outside of work.
For example, a few summers ago, we had a barbecue at one of those friend’s house. It was make your own plate, then find a place to sit. Turns out, all my work friends (women) ended up sitting in the dining room inside, while their spouses/significant others (men) sat on the deck outside.
I made my plate, headed to the dining room, and sat down at the table with my friends.
“All the guys are on the deck,” I smiled.
Well, all the guys except me, as I began to eat my food.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the guys on the deck, all great friends, but I never worked with any of them.
Now that I’m retired, I don’t see my work friends as often, so when an opportunity arose to get together, we all jumped at it.
A few weekends ago, this group of friends continued a tradition – an after New Year party at one of those friend’s house. We have been doing this for well over a decade.
And since all the people that worked with me at these parties are women, it sometimes creates a unique dynamic.
Their are benefits to having strong woman friends. Relationship advice, what I should and shouldn’t do on a variety of situations, and they get me to go to the doctor when I’m too hard headed to go myself.
It’s like having a wife, but without the sex (so, yes, it is exactly like having a wife).
Actually, I did have one friend who was my work wife, and I was her work husband (and, yes, there was also no sex).
Being so close with these women, they know more about my personal life then most people in my family. Especially, over the years, when I was in a long term relationship they knew just about everything. And, I mean...everything.
In return, I knew a lot about theirs.
With that said, I should not have been surprised by the following conversation that I overheard, but I was.
Dinner was just finishing up, I still worked on a piece of lasagna, and the rest of the men went off to the living to watch football. Once again, it was just me and the women; them on one side of the dinning room table, and me on the other.
Besides my work friends, two of them had their daughters with them, early twenties, early thirties. I could half hear their conversations, but my ears perked up when one of my friends said, “Sorry, Al.”
That’s when I realized each of the women were telling stories about the first time they had their periods.
Now I’m thinking, do they feel comfortable with me because we have shared a lot of information about each other’s lives before? Or, are they thinking, “It’s okay, it just Al.”
Hopefully its the former, would be disappointed if it was the later.
Now, I’m not about to share this round-robin discussion about first time periods, but some sounded horrific for a young woman being caught by surprise, with this aspect of their lives.
And yet, there was a lot of laughter coming from their end of the table.
I guess file it under the heading, “Well, I can laugh about it now but, let me tell you a story…”
Each story tried to top the last until the hostess, Angela, came into the dinning room. She looked at this arrangement, the women at one end of the table, me at the other.
“You know,” she said, “he’s only sitting there so he could write about it in his blog.”
I replied, “I never thought of that (of course I did), but thank you, Angela, for the idea.”
Truth is, the real problem was, I had nothing to contribute to this particular conversation.
Now, if they spoke about a different topic, say, how each of us lost our virginity, then maybe I could have added something to the conversation.
“Well, I can laugh about it now,” I would have said, “but, let me tell you a story.”
