dirty acronyms

There is something really special about the friends made before kids (FBK). The people who knew you before you became a parent (back when you were neurotic just because) and have remained in your life by choice. I am very fortunate to have a quite a few friends like this. Many of my FBKs also have kids now, so we have that level of life to relate on. But there are others who’ve wisely refrained from the art of babymaking, and we’re still friends even though I often (and silently) resent their freedom.

With the exception of one FBK, they’re all female, because most of my pre-marriage male friendships didn’t make it. And I was never really interested in making new male friends after the fact. I could’ve. My husband wouldn’t have cared. But I didn’t really see the point. And then after kids? Forget it. I didn’t even have time to nurture my female friendships the way I wanted. Plus I never really forgot how much I loathed my mom’s male friend when I was a kid. He was actually a friend to both of my parents, but all of the Windmill french fries in the world couldn’t make me hate him less. (Of course if we tried that again now, those french fries would produce much different results. Especially with cheese…moving on.)

Anyway, I do have one male friendship that has made it over the years. One great guy I used to work with years ago in the bowels of PBS. We still text from time to time, and meet on a bi-anual basis for coffee and catching up. He’ll occasionally humor me with out-of-the-blue the comments on the blog (even though I know he could care less about what I’m writing on) and has even come out to a Speakeasy show with his lovely girlfriend. He’s met my kids (he’s probably closer to their age than mine) and even bought them gifts. He’s a good egg.

He’s also the only individual who would text me on a Saturday morning with:

Yes, I really laugh like that. So what?

Until now I’ve always refrained from using BMM as an acronym for the blog because the first thing it made me think was something related to bowel movements. Though in fairness, parenting (especially bad parenting) often feels like a movement of the runny persuasion. However, I never thought to look it up. Two signs that I’m getting old. Had I spent the :05 required to research this, the rest of this post wouldn’t have happened and my life would be 100% better.

First, here are the top three hits of BMM on Urban Dictionary.

Second, because it was so funny I thought I’d file it away for a Top 10 post, or some random throw-away comment, because it made me laugh, which was no easy feat on a Saturday morning when my kids were getting bored. And since I was running out of time to communicate with my friend, I was texting in a hurry, because as you know FBK (who also happen to be Friends Without Kids) have very different time constraints. And I’d hate to just disappear mid-conversation. It’s rude.

Anyway, speed texter/multi-tasker that I am, I told ONE I’d play with her in a minute and texted “Thanks for giving me a blog post” to my friend. Only when I looked down, the phone had autocorrected my words and sent the following text to my super platonic male friend, who (as I may have mentioned) has the loveliest girlfriend that I hope he marries some day (and soon):

As if turning off autocorrect would help. THIS is the real reason I don’t have male friends. My social skills? Lacking before, non-existant now.

And male friends who don’t have kids have no way of understanding what happens to (some) female minds (mine, specifically) after giving birth. They have no way of understanding the level of mom-multitasking that comes with the job, and how little attention is required for each activity in order to play them off simultaneously. Or why someone might type so fast without looking at their words because they’re somewhat desperate to get them out 1) before they forget and 2) before their kids catch them laughing about something they don’t want to share with them.

I hurried back to Urban Dictionary in hopes of gleaning some snark to either deflect my BMM (Biggest, Mortifying Moment), or perhaps even bring the text around full circle before I said good-bye and BMM (Buried My Mentality) under a rock with my texting skills and grasp of current acronyms. But I found nothing. Nothing. Even Urban Dictionary was smart enough not to touch HIV jokes. Unlike me. (Where’s Siri when you need her?)

Thank goodness summer vacation starts in 4 days. With both kids constantly in tow, there’s no chance for our bi-annual coffee until sometime in September, and maybe by then I’ll no longer want to DIE.

As for my friend? He’s young and mature enough to just laugh at me and let it go.

And me? I’m just old and immature enough not to be able to.

©2012 CEK. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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