Divorces R Us

[Zues126]

J, your posts have been very relieving to me. It is nice to feel understood. Understanding and agreement are different things and I don't expect everyone to agree with me. But just to be heard is powerful, so thank you.

Funny time tonight, I'll post on your thread because I'm not up for bumping mine. One of my former co-workers is having a kid so he had a little outdoor gathering to celebrate. Well, I am not very social and normally don't go to stuff like this. I am usually playing pool, or chess, or reading, or something like that. I'm not antisocial to where I can't get along in a group setting, it's just not my scene. But my friend invited me a couple of times and followed up by a phone call. I realized I do like him a lot, and that life goes fast, and it would be good to go there. So I did.

It was good to see him, but as he was the only one there I knew and he was the host, I had to find others to hang out with. I invited myself to one table with a small group, and it wasn't long until I felt really out of place. My friend would call it the 'shiny shirt' club.

[Little context. This comes from pool. In pool, all of the top national players act and dress and play a certain way. It's like it's the stylish thing to do. They dress up with slacks and polo shirts, and usually have patches of sponsors on their shirts. And inevitably their shirts are super shiny. So then the players all wear their shiny shirts as if to show they've arrived, and the wannabees try dressing the same to act as if they're one of them. Me and my buddy don't wear shiny shirts, we just try to beat those that do.

In fact, one time my friend went to some bike trail where everyone was wearing spandex and aerodynamic everything, he showed up wearing a sweatshirt and jeans and hoodie, because f them all, that's why. My friend is as competitive as I am and does serious training, anyway he and a buddy were doing a triathalon and he wore the full gear. He would have had a huge lead over his friend during the running section but he waited up so they could be together. Then they got to the biking section, and not only did my friend have his full gear but he had a mountain bike, instead of the street racing bikes everyone else had, which was so detrimental he couldn't even come close to keeping up. Suddenly the friend that he had been waiting up for took off and left him behind. My buddy was pissed. After a few minutes the competitive juices woke up and he decided to catch him no matter what it took. He attacked and pedaled and got that small mountain bike going like crazy, in full sweatgear, and lo and behold he flew past his friend a few miles later and never looked back. I laughed when I heard that story. Point is they can all have their shiny shirts, I believe in grit.]

OK, so everyone at this table was super cool, designer clothes, perfect work out physique for the guys and perfect tan and accessories for the women, brand name sunglasses, every wife was a dance instructor, etc. They were talking about this and that, what the right number of kids to have is, baby names, etc. I found myself having my first beer in months wondering what I was doing. I tried to work into the conversation with a few questions or the occasional quip and I didn't fail, but it was obvious to me and probably to them that I was a different species.

Then I caught up with one guy elsewhere that started talking about a game he's into. I met him once before at a poker game hosted by my same former co-worker so greeted him. Turns out he was a gamer, and started talking about different games and some of the subculture. Boom. I was in my element. I asked him a ton of questions and let him tell me all about the nuances of different cult followings. He gave me a little bit of an ear beating but it was at least interesting, and I did contribute a bit to the conversation as well. He's not going to be my new best friend (my best friend always says that to be a good friend you need to be interesting and interested...interesting to listen to, and interested in who you are talking to...this guy was interesting to an extent but not interested in me, which is funny because I'm likely to be the best competitor that he's ever met in his life and he's ear beating me about games for an hour without asking me anything, but whatever). But it was good to be able to be myself and at least hang out for a bit without wanting to stab myself in the leg.

Moral of the story? Hm, well, first I suppose it was good that I at least tried to GAL. Second, I was reminded how different I am from many people. I forget because I only really associate with people that are in the brilliant-depressed-obsessive-competitive-artistic-intense-tormented-outlier like category, so I forget that I'm a little odd myself because when I talk to that group I feel quite normal. But in most normal settings I am reminded that I'm a little unusual. The point of all of this is, though, that I realize that while I'm a little different, that's ok, because I do fit in somewhere. It's just not the shiny shirt club.

Ug, what a pointless long hijack. That's ok. It's actually a test. If you reply to this last sentence then I know you read the whole thing and I will keep posting on your threads. If you don't, I'll know you are too shallow to be a DB partner...