My kids had a school open house this week. These things irritate me. Classrooms display the outstanding project work of the students. Project work the parents actually completed. So I walk around the fifth grade classroom admiring other parents artistic craft skills and hope they like mine.
At some point, everyone gravitates to an area called the bowl. Here the middle school kids were showing off a hovercraft they built. I was talking to my friend Bobi about some new divorce indignity when her friend Kim showed up and commiserated. Her split had been awful. Another friend from basketball days gone by came over. His wife is bipolar and having an affair. For the last year he’s been trying to extricate himself from the relationship but maintain full custody of their son. It’s tricky. I saw Mac (he divorced his wife and got custody of his two kids when his ex became an oxycodone addict) talking to Sara who recently got the divorce reward boob job. That’s when it occurred to me that everyone at the north end of the bowl was divorced.
All the married people were at the south end. Waving to us. Just two years ago I would have probably been at the south end. Why the separation? It’s bothered me for days. It also occurs to me that I miss my friends; I miss them because they don’t call or come by any more. In fact, when my kids have a play date, the dads now drop off. I use to think there was some sort of flirty thing might be at play but forget about it - kid stuff is driven by the mom. The moms are telling the dads to pick up the kids.
It’s tough to know what’ going on. Do they not trust us? Bad kids come from broken families, or so it goes. Are they perversely envious? Are we damaged or unworthy? Do they not want their husbands thinking they might be getting our lawyers’ names? Something is going on. I can console myself with this: we looked better. Maybe it’s the boob jobs.