Thursday, September 13, 2012

218 Days - Life Outside the Bunco Circle: A Working Mom’s Choice between Being In and Being True

Making friends in Atlanta has been, well… difficult, but mostly because I don’t really try. I’m a Northerner, see, and while Atlanta is a city of transplants it does have a way of quickly Southernizing people once they move here. But not me. I still expect to smell gravy (spaghetti sauce) cooking on Sunday morning when I stroll down the block and still believe that I can waltz in to my next-door neighbor’s house by opening the door and yelling “It’s Barbara. Is coffee on?” Neither of those things ever happens, though, and while it saddens me, I don’t really worry about it, because there is more to life than fitting in where you are, there is being true to who you are, and that’s what I’m doing every day that I wake up.  
I had no idea what Bunco was, how to play it, or why it was supposed to be the best thing on earth since a singing Hugh Jackman. What I knew of it, and all that I knew of it, was that it was played by middle-aged women in the ‘burbs with a passion for drinking, Zumba classes, and the occasional Botox injection (or so they said), so imagine my surprise when a group of gals in my inner-city, mostly Democratic, pseudo tree-hugging neighborhood decided to form a Bunco group and invited a bunch of us to join. Never being one to turn down an excuse to drink, I gave the idea some serious thought. “Could it be… that I could maybe make actual… friends here? I won’t know what to do with myself! Do I bring something? Should I bake something? Would the suburb women bake? Or would they buy? I should buy. People might get the wrong impression if I baked. Or would they think I was showing off if I bought?” This display of idiocy and ridiculousness went on in my mind for minutes at least, until I had gathered up the courage to respond to the invitation.
“Yes. I accept. Put me down for a night of revelry and drunken camaraderie, Bunco-style! Because of work I will only be able to attend occasionally, but what the hell, let’s do it anyway!” I nerdingly exclaimed before I clicked send.
I then sat back with my arms folded across my chest and thought, “I’m so proud of me. I can do this! I am on my way to friendships. I knew this was the right decision” before heading downstairs to pick out my clothes for work for the following morning, take my nighttime shower, and put myself to bed while visions of dice, cheap wine, and high-pitched laughter danced in my head.
Poor naïve, friendless, working-mom me. So innocent. So… out of the loop. I closed my smiling eyes never seeing the truth for what it was. Never bothering to read up on this Wisteria Lane-esque phenomenon that was sweeping the nation and had been for years. You see, for those who don’t know (and believe me, there are still people like me out there that don’t), Bunco isn’t some fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-I’ll-show-up-occasionally-with-tequila gathering of middle-aged women and mothers. It’s a marriage… a commitment. And if you can’t commit to one night a month with your house (no matter what the size or how many kids occupy it) playing host when your turn is up, then sista, you can roll your Bunco die around some other Peyton Place, ‘cause it ain’t rollin’ ‘round these parts… no way, no how.
In so many words I received a response a few days later that politely but firmly explained the following as it pertained to said Bunco group: “You’re either in, or you’re out.” And knowing that my job – one that took me away from my house, husband, and family for eleven-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week – would not allow me to commit to something as serious as a dice game (irony alert), I made a choice that I wondered if I would regret down the road. I hit reply, put my non-manicured fingertips on the dust-reddened keys of my non-MAC laptop and typed three words:
“Then I’m out.”
And clicked “send” before I had the chance to change my mind.
I wrote that email years ago and to be honest, I haven’t looked back. What my Bunco experience taught me was that I didn’t need friends just to have friends. I need, my job. I need, my husband. I need the house I live in, small or not, and fancy or not. And I need to like who I am even if other women don’t. Don’t get me wrong – I have friends, they just mostly aren’t here in Atlanta. The ones that are here are very cool whether they’re working moms or SAH moms.  But when I go home to the North, my old friends and I sit around their dining room tables in our pajamas, without make-up on, drinking coffee and telling stories as we laugh our asses off loudly in grand ol’ Philly style.
And that, to me, is my kind of friendship. And we do it without dice, and without booze, and without a doctrine, contract, or commitment. It’s organic, the way friendship is supposed to be, and I have no regrets.

2 comments:

  1. I hate bunco. Mindless game, bored women and alcohol is not really a fun mix. And I like you even more for walking away from it! :)

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  2. I will never be invited to play Bunco. I should put that on one of those vintage pic memes and Facebook that bad boy like a badge of honor. Bored women with alcohol and a freakish adoration of that whole monogrammed zebra print beer coozie fad is more than my no ability to bullshit self can take. Makes my eye twitch just thinking about it!

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