As Chandler Bing Would Say, “Could You Be More Wrong?!”

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you will probably have formed a pretty accurate picture of the kind of person I am. While I love my life and love being me, I realize that who and how I’ve chosen to be would not necessarily be everyone‘s first choice. I’ll never appear on anyone’s lists for what is New, Hot, Sexy, or Popular. But then again, I will also never appear on any lists detailing all the women who have, for whatever reason, revealed their hoo-ha’s for the entire world to see. So it goes both ways.

I just sort of assumed that everyone saw me in the same way, but apparently that is not always the case if the following story is any indication.

As I mentioned before we had dinner with one of The Gamers last weekend, but before eating we went to her house because she and her mom just got a new kitten and of course, we had to go and play with it. As we were getting ready to leave, her mom (who incidentally has known me for the last seven years, ever since we worked together as booksellers, so it’s not like she’s never met me before) asked where we were going to eat.

“We’re going over to Firehouse Subs,” I told her.

She frowned like she didn’t know what I was talking about, which I thought was odd since she was the one who had first introduced me to Firehouse a few years ago.

“Where?” she asked again.

“You know, Firehouse. Over by the Walmart.”

Her frown increased, and then she tentatively asked, “The biker bar?”

I write a lot on this website about “What?!” moments, which I define as moments when your entire being comes to a screeching halt because you’ve encountered something-a person, a bit of information, an idea-that you just can’t process. For whatever reason it is a shock to your system, and you (and occasionally, The Entire Universe) are completely stopped dead in your tracks. This was one of those moments.

My friend of seven years wanted to know if I was going to a biker bar.

“Oh, yeah, you caught me. Most people are thrown off track by my sparkly wishing wand and princess tiara,

or my collection of cat figurines

including a bumper sticker that reads, “My child eats bugs,”

or my fascination with diamond rings,

but not you. Where most people would interpret all those things as signs of intense ‘Girlyness’, you saw through the charade to the leather-clad biker girl inside just yearning to be set free.”

Once my husband was able to pick himself up from the floor where he had fallen down from the force of all his laughter we decided to go, even though this meant having to leave aside the extremely relevant question, “And just exactly how have you, Ms. Middle-Aged-Mother-Of-Two-Grown-Children, come to be so conversant with the local biker bars?” Because if there was ever a moment in time when all The Laws Of The Known Universe were being transgressed, and hoo-ha’s might accidentally have started flashing around, it was then. And I would really prefer to keep a little mystery in our relationship. Wouldn’t you?