I Used to Play Bass for Elaborate Pseudonym

Just returned from a lovely evening with friends. We joined some friends J and J (huh...identical initials foiling my elaborate pseudonym plan) to celebrate E's birthday. There were homemade pizzas and shrieking children chasing each other through the house and I made a cake! From scratch, even! We fed the children first and sent them downstairs for a movie (Mr. J casually informed us that he'd rented Apocalypse Now), then the adults (and Tankbaby) sat around and ate pizza and drank wine (um, not Tankbaby) and laughed. It was just easy and constantly amusing (at one point, MOTH referenced the Simpsons' "fifth-level vegan...eats nothing that casts a shadow," and Mr. J chimed in, "They consume only pollen and dew.") and had that lovely rhythm that comes of a group of people who have known each other for years. It was all warmly-lit and I stepped outside myself for a bit and panned around the room, aware of how this would clearly be the scene tat the end of the episode, where the beloved characters took a break from resolving plotlines while some Decemberists song swelled gradually in the background.

J-the-woman was rea-hilly enjoying the wine, and the rest of us were enjoying her. E had borrowed J's luggage for a recent trip and, while unpacking, came across this purple post-it with names and dates and things like "Edwardian period" written on it. Realizing it wasn't hers, she took it to work the next day and put it on J's desk. An unremarkable story, except that in the telling, tipsy J began to moan and shriek, "I'm a sham!" She then burst in to explain that the subtext of that meticulously placed post-it on her desk was, "And you call yourself a former lit major! You don't know your Edwardians from your Victorians! I thought I knew you, but it's all been a pack of lies! Lies! LIES I TELL YOU!!!"

E kept protesting, "I put the post-it down. That's the end of the story as far as I know it."

But J would burst in, "No! I just...I needed to remember! Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell...I should...I couldn't..." and then fall into embarrassed giggles, hiding her face.

I finally asked, "Um, do you think we're friends with you because of your literary knowledge? Because I'm friends with you because you give me all your kids' hand-me-downs."

It degenerated from there, and after finishing her glass of wine, J turned abruptly to me with a mock accusatory finger and asked, "So, what's the deal? Why don't you drink? Is it a thing, or just a... thing?"

I started to answer, "Well, I don't like the taste, for one thing, and it just never seemed like something I wanted or needed to bother to cultivate, and--"

She turned to the rest of the table, triumphantly shrieking, "Who's thinking about the Brontes now, eh?!" She couldn't seem to believe that we hadn't been thinking about the Brontes before. Mostly we were thinking, "Hmm...maybe we don't open that third bottle of wine." But Ms. J seemed reassured by the idea that a quick left turn into my abstinence would distract the angry hordes from the public stoning in the town square that would otherwise be her fate.

This is, by the way, the mom of the kid who opened with "You know what's cool about me?" So in addition to that as an opening gambit, I now offer you "Who's thinking about the Brontes now, eh?!" as a way to declare victory in conversation.

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This actually happened today, I swear: I was folding laundry and Tankbaby kept tugging on my pants leg, whimpering. I was all, "What is it? What is it, boy?" and finally followed him...to where the dog was trapped. Suck it, Lassie.

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P.S. Confidential to Elly, some more: Don't give up on me. I'm going to collect your random suggestions and weave them all into a hilarious, coherent, culturally-relevant entry. No, really.