Socially Awkward

At every company-sponsored shindig (in fact, at pretty much every social event in my small city) a great deal of talk ensues about people who are not present but who are known to the group: who bought a house, who has what number of kids, whose kid got accepted to which college, whose wife "had" to go to work, who is getting a divorce.

At the last company dinner, one of the women mentioned someone in her neighborhood who was going through a divorce and had worn her wedding dress to take her kids trick-or-treating. I asked what the dress had looked like and the woman across the table stared at me blankly. "She just wore her wedding dress as a costume," she said. Like I might be a little dumb.

I explained, "If you're going to wear your wedding dress as a Halloween costume because you are going through a divorce, you have to WORK it. She should have torn the hem, run it over a couple of times with her car, and written things on it with a Sharpie, such as 'LYING CREEP' and "SO MUCH FOR FOREVER'." People were looking at me strangely.

"Wear her hair messy and bedraggled... smear her makeup... make it performance art..." I lapsed into silence. People started discussing other topics.

Awkward moments like that, my friends, are why I rarely get invited anywhere.