What I want to know is, why didn’t some wise elder woman of the tribe park my late-teen (or earlytwentysomething) still-shiny new moons down on a bench somewhere, to point out that if I wanted to pirouette, there was still time to get those pins and glutes twirling? Why, oh, why, did it take Sun Chips and brownie bites and a striped couch that sinks in the middle and smells like dog farts to make me realize, twenty years later, that the kids on TV could have been me?
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My mama didn’t raise no piggies. I can speak real nice on the telephone, either when forced to at gunpoint, or due to freakish illness of either of my wee lassies.

“This is the answering service for the pediatrician’s office, ma’am.”

“I realize that. But I am a good citizen with a sick kid and I’m trying to figure out THE PROPER AUTHORITIES TO BOTHER.”

“What’s her temperature, ma’am?”

“I don’t know. We lost the digital thermometer in the flood.”

“What?”

“In the Great Depression. In the potato famine of 1846.”

“Excuse me?”
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1) SINGLE NETWORKING

I find that a lot of us Re-Singled Folk turn to Facebook and other social networking sites to expand our sphere of friends again. It makes sense. If we’ve been in a relationship for years, really “in” it, we may have forgotten to surface for some time. Our friendships may have evaporated like a vodka gimlet on Aunt Betty’s lips. No! you gasp! Not I!

Ah, friend, the unexamined single life is not worth living. I’m not convinced the examined one is worth the trouble either, but, anyhoo. Maybe you were just quietly, modestly, demurely coupled, like my idol, Caroline Ingalls. Maybe you kept in touch with all of your friends — single or married, kids or no kids — and did your part in life. You smooched when it was smoochin’ time and milked when it was milkin’ time and shot bears when it was bear-shootin’ time, amen.

But consider this: Most of us are no Caroline Ingalls, sirs and mesdames! Face it, many of us who were in partnerships left irritated friends by the wayside over the years. Once, we were the ones saying about our single pals, If only they could be happy, like us!
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